Peach Tree Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data earlier this month, indicating there were more than 100,000 estimated deaths from drug overdoses in the United States from April 2020 to April 2021. 

This represents a 28.5% increase from the year prior, the report said, though the CDC indicates the conclusion was reached using underreported, incomplete data.

Data for Georgia shows an estimated 36.3% increase in drug overdose over the same one-year period.

“Provisional drug overdose death counts are based on death records received and processed by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) as of a specified cutoff date,” the CDC wrote in the report.

In other news about the country's opioid crisis, a Nov. 23 report by CNBC said that a jury in Ohio has held CVS, Walgreens and Walmart responsible for the Ohio’s opioid crisis after opioids were overprescribed in two counties. According to the report, this was the first trial in decades that saw a pharmacy company defend itself in the context of opioid abuse, stating it could serve as a precedent holding pharmacies accountable across the U.S. 

“As we have said throughout this process, we never manufactured or marketed opioids nor did we distribute them to the ‘pill mills’ and internet pharmacies that fueled this crisis,” Walgreen spokesperson Fraser Engerman said in a statement. 

The companies intend to appeal the ruling. 

“The plaintiffs’ attempt to resolve the opioid crisis with an unprecedented expansion of public nuisance law is misguided and unsustainable,” Engerman said. 

In Georgia, the Department of Public Health is working through a number of different programs to combat opioid misuse, including Opioid and Substance Misuse Response, the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program and Drug Surveillance Unit.

Data published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that in 2018 — the last full year for that report — nearly 70% of all overdose deaths nationally were from opioids. In Georgia, the rate was more than 60% that year. That percentage has risen as the state Department of Public Health blamed 67% of overdose deaths in 2020 on opioids.