Americans more likely to die of opioid overdose than car accident: Report
For the first time in US history, Americans' odds of dying from an accidental opioid overdose are higher than from a motor vehicle crash, a according to a new report on preventable deaths.
Americans now have a 1 in 96 chance of dying from an opioid overdose, according to an analysis by the National Safety Council (NSC) using 2017 data on accidental deaths.
The NSC, a health advocacy group, said the probability of dying in a motor vehicle crash is 1 in 103.
While the leading causes of death in the US are heart disease (1 in 6 chance) and cancer (1 in 7), the rising overdose numbers are part of distressing trend NSC has tracked.
Respiratory disease and overall accidents were the third and fourth causes of mortality in the US.
"The nation's opioid crisis is fueling the Council's grim probabilities, and that crisis is worsening with an influx of illicit fentanyl," the council said in a statement released Monday.
Life expectancy in the United States declined from 2016 to 2017 due to increased drug overdoses and suicides, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in December.
Overall, 70,000 people in the US died from a drug overdose in 2017, setting a new record, the CDC reported in November.
However, the actual death rate from the country’s drug epidemic may be much higher. Opioid-related deaths have been under-counted by as much as 35 percent, according to a study published last year in the journal Addiction.
"It is impacting our workforce, it is impacting our fathers and mothers who are still raising their children," said Ken Kolosh, manager of statistics at NSC.
In 2017, deaths from all accidents in the US were 169,936, a record high and an increase of 5.3 percent from the year before, the council said.
Last week, the CDC reported that the rate of deaths from drug overdoses among US women has soared in recent years, climbing more than 260 percent from 1999 to 2017.
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