By Beth Macy
Review via The Seattle Times
The numbers are overwhelming: 63,632 Americans died of a drug overdose in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost two-thirds of those deaths were from a prescription or illicit opioid, and the government report was unusually blunt: “America’s overdose epidemic is spreading geographically and increasing across demographic groups.” Drug overdose, Macy writes, “is now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of fifty, killing more people than guns or car accidents, at a rate higher than the HIV epidemic at its peak.”
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