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The National Center for Health Statistics of the United States released its new figures Thursday and the trend is confirmed: life expectancy decline across the Atlantic. A child born in 2014 in the United States could expect to live 78.9 years on average, compared to 78.6 years in 2018. "This is the first time that we have seen a downward trend since the great flu epidemic of 1918, "says Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics.
More murderous than firearms. The main factor that explains this phenomenon is drug overdoses, especially those related to opioids. In 2017, 72,000 Americans died of overdoses, about two-thirds of them due to over-consumption of opioids. By comparison, this death toll is higher than that of those killed by firearms and in road accidents combined.
Overconsumption both legal and illegal. The health crisis started in the early 2010s, caused by the over-prescription of drugs such as morphine, hydromorphone or oxycodone, used as painkillers in the treatment of cancer or for other disorders. If the population of the United States represents 5% of the world population, it consumes nearly 80% of opioids in the international market. About 2 million Americans would be addicted to these drugs.
In a few decades, doctors and pharmaceutical companies have ambaded a small fortune with these prescriptions, as pointed out Xavier Yvon, the correspondent for Europe 1 in the United States in March, while obscuring the strong risks of dependency related taking these substances. However, once the doctors' prescriptions are completed, at the end of the care, many patients remain dependent on the product. They then turn to substitutes, unlawfully, from dealers.
The ravages of Fentanyl. Today in the United States, Fentanyl is the biggest threat to opioid drugs. This synthetic badgesic, highly addictive, is 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin: 2 milligrams can kill a man, against 200 milligrams for heroin. Prince in 2016, the singer Cranberries – Dolores O'Riordan – or Tom Petty in early 2018, have all succumbed to an overdose of this drug. For drug traffickers, Fentanyl is more interesting because cheaper to produce and more lucrative. In 2016, the number of deaths related to Fentanyl (20,100) surpbaded those related to heroin (15,400).
An alarming health report, whose disastrous consequences are not only sanitary. According to a survey of New Yorker, the cost of the opioid crisis could be estimated at over $ 150 billion a year, including the impact on the labor market, related to the inability of some people to work.
Emergency state. After declaring the national health emergency for opioids in October 2017, Donald Trump announced several ways to combat this crisis. In addition to a decrease in the production of the drugs concerned, a better prevention with doctors and a greater repression for dealers, the US administration is considering filing a complaint against certain pharmaceutical companies guilty, in his view, of the health crisis.
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