Vienna, March 9. Cases of overdoses and deaths from synthetic opioid use have increased by 202 in the United States and Canada, according to the UN alert in a report published this Thursday in Vienna.
“The drug overdose epidemic in North America has worsened in 2022 due to increased production and trafficking of synthetic opioids, including illicit fentanyl,” says the International Drug Control Board. Narcotic Drugs (INCB) in its analysis of the production, trafficking and consumption of drugs over the past year.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine.
The INCB, a body of the United Nations system, points out that the overdose crisis has been “exacerbated” and has generated an increase in deaths.
“Recorded overdose deaths in Canada and the United States have increased despite the adoption of strengthened measures to mitigate the negative consequences of drug use, such as the increased availability and accessibility of naloxone and the use of test strips to detect fentanyl,” he said.
Thus, preliminary data indicates that in the United States, more than 107,000 people died of overdoses in 2021, an increase of 15% compared to the figures for 2020.
The increase in the number of deaths caused specifically by synthetic opioids is even greater and accounts for 60% of all deaths from this cause, according to the INCB, which points out that there is no data on the number of overdoses. not fatal.
In Canada, overdose deaths have skyrocketed by 96% between 2020 and 2021.
The country’s health authorities have explained that the supply of increasingly toxic drugs has contributed to the worsening of the overdose crisis.
North America remains the region of the world with the most opioid use for pain treatment, with rates of use of these drugs more than double those of Western and Central Europe. EFE
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