Every day, approximately 170 Americans die from an opioid overdose.
The opioid abuse crisis has been building for 30 years. It started with physicians over-prescribing painkillers and has now morphed into a heroin and fentanyl epidemic. In 2017, an estimated 62,000 people died from opioid related overdoses, up 48 percent from 42,000 deaths in 2016. Drug overdoses now represent the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50 and life expectancy has fallen.
