Fentanyl Is Killing More People And Over Takes Heroin As The #1 Overdose Killer

Despite all the efforts to control opioid crisis, since 2011, drug and substance overdose deaths have risen by 54 percent in five years, up from 41,340 to 63,632 in 2016.
Those deaths are hiding some very important vital statics, there are a number of trends emerging from within. Here is one alarming trend from those deaths.
 

A report released recently by National Vital Statistics Reports, identifies the specific drugs involved most  frequently  in  drug  overdose  deaths  in  the  United  States  from 2011 through 2016.
Methods used in the creating the report involves, Record-level data from the 2011–2016 National Vital  Statistics  System–Mortality  files  were  linked  to  electronic  files  containing  literal  text  information  from  death  certificates.  Drug  overdose  deaths  were  identified  using  the  International Classification  of  Diseases,  Tenth  Revision  underlying  cause-of-death  codes  X40–X44,  X60–X64,  X85,  and  Y10–Y14.  Drug  mentions  were  identified  by  searching  the  literal  text  in  three  fields  of  the  death  certificate:  the  causes  of  death  from  Part  I,  significant  conditions  contributing  to  death  from  Part  II,  and  a  description  of  how  the  injury  occurred.  Contextual  information  was used to determine drug involvement in the death. Descriptive statistics were calculated for drug overdose deaths involving the 10  most  frequently  mentioned  drugs.  Deaths  involving  more  than one drug (e.g., a death involving both heroin and cocaine) were counted in all relevant drug categories (e.g., the same death was included in counts of heroin deaths and in counts of cocaine deaths).

Results are amazing and among  drug  overdose  deaths  that  mentioned  at  least one specific drug, the 10 most frequently mentioned drugs during   2011–2016   included   fentanyl,   heroin,   hydrocodone,   methadone,    morphine,    oxycodone,    alprazolam,    diazepam,    cocaine, and methamphetamine. Oxycodone ranked first in 2011, heroin during 2012–2015, and fentanyl in 2016. During the study period, cocaine consistently ranked second or third. From 2011 through  2016,  the  age-adjusted  rate  of  drug  overdose  deaths  involving  heroin  more  than  tripled,  as  did  the  rate  of  drug  overdose  deaths  involving  methamphetamine.  The  rate  of  drug  overdose deaths involving fentanyl and fentanyl analogs doubled each  year  from  2013  through  2016,  from  0.6  per  100,000  in  2013  to  1.3  in  2014,  2.6  in  2015,  and  5.9  in  2016.  The  rate  of overdose  deaths  involving  methadone  decreased  from  1.4  per  100,000  in  2011  to  1.1  in  2016.  The  10  most  frequently  mentioned  drugs  often  were  found  in  combination  with  each  other. The drugs most frequently mentioned varied by the intent of the drug overdose death. In 2016, the drugs most frequently mentioned in unintentional drug overdose deaths were fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine, while the drugs most frequently mentioned in suicides by drug overdose were oxycodone, diphenhydramine, hydrocodone, and alprazolam.

Complete 14 page report could be found here.