Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in America, CDC confirms

In 2016, over 18,000 overdose deaths involved fentanyl, and 16,000 fatalities were due to heroin.

Although many experts have pointed to the overprescribing of prescription painkillers as the root of the US opioid crisis, they say it has evolved, first into a heroin crisis and now into a fentanyl epidemic.

In the 2011-16 period examined, the number of drug overdoses involving methadone has dropped.

“Fentanyl is so deadly, in the geographic regions where it’s been flooding in, deaths soared like we’ve never seen before,” he said.

Much of the emphasis of the drug overdose crisis has been on opioids, but there has also been an increase in the rates and numbers of cocaine- and methamphetamine-related deaths.

In the same six-year time frame, cocaine was consistently the second or third most commonly used drug, and the rate of overdose deaths involving methamphetamines tripled.

Cocaine-related fatalities nearly doubled from 2014 to 2016, jumping from 5,892 to 11,316 overdose deaths.

The authors of the study used text analysis to evaluate death certificates for specific drug mentions. They found that the top 10 drugs in the six-year period remained the same and belonged to three classes of drugs:

The study found that illicit drugs like fentanyl and heroin were the leading causes of unintentional overdoses, and prescription drugs were more likely to be involved in suicidal overdoses.