Overdose deaths put at above 100,000 for year in US

Drug overdose deaths in the United States have reached another record high－an estimated 104,288 people died in the 12 months ending September 2021.

That number from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Feb 16 means that drug overdose deaths in the US now surpass deaths from car accidents, guns, the flu, and pneumonia.

The most recent data found that nearly 70 percent of all overdose deaths involve synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which is 50 times more powerful than heroin and is extremely cheap to produce. It is used as a cutting agent that can stretch a supply of heroin.

Katherine Keyes, associate professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, was part of a research team that modeled the potential impact of the coronavirus outbreak on drug overdoses.

They found that even if the pandemic did end overnight, the effect on drug overdoses would persist for at least a year. "It's not like they turn off overnight," said Keyes, whose research focuses on psychiatric and substance use epidemiology.

Rahul Gupta, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, is a strong advocate of using harm reduction to prevent overdoses－making drug use safer instead of focusing on abstinence alone. He said it is a shift in how the country has long approached drug use.

'Unprecedented level'

"If you're looking to save lives and you've reached a historic unprecedented level of deaths, then you cannot avoid looking at any and every option in order to save those lives," Gupta told CNN.

One harm reduction program is in New York City, where public health experts said the first such overdose prevention center, or OPC, that opened in the US last November is already saving lives.

People can use drugs in an OPC where nurses or other clinical staff members present can help avert fatal overdoses.

As of Feb 8, the center has served nearly 700 New Yorkers and intervened in 134 overdoses, according to OnPoint NYC.

The city announced in November that it would open two OPCs in Manhattan's East Harlem and Washington Heights.

"We are humanizing and giving hope to people that far too often society sees as disposable and defines them by their mistakes," Sam Rivers, executive director of OnPoint NYC, told ABC News in a statement.

However, critics of OPCs said they enable drug users to just die of overdoses in other settings. But others said OPCs reduce the amount and frequency that people use drugs and reduce public disorder and public injections while increasing public safety.

Emily Kaltenbach, senior director of criminal legal and policing reform at nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, told ABC News that OPCs prevent drug users from other harmful behaviors that could increase their risk of death, such as taking contaminated drugs or injecting with dirty or shared syringes. Staff can also administer naloxone, a medication to reverse overdoses.

"This is a step forward in making, in really treating drug use as a health issue and not as a criminal issue," Kaltenbach added.

In New York City, overdose deaths increased from 1,497 in 2019 to 2,062 in 2020, with more than 85 percent involving opioids, according to city health data. Data in 2021 showed someone dying from an overdose every four hours in New York City.

Opioid overdoses cost the city's healthcare system an estimated $50 million every year for medical service calls, emergency room visits and hospitalizations, a city study found.