Fentanyl surpasses heroin as deadliest drug in US 6 SHARES Share it! Share TweetBy Agence France-PresseThe synthetic drug, fentanyl, has surpassed heroin as the deadliest drug in the United States, taking more than 18,000 lives in 2016, federal health officials said Wednesday. The rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States has tripled from 1999 through 2016, as the nation grapples with a persistent opioid epidemic. Fentanyl-related drug overdose deaths have doubled each year from 2013 through 2016, “from 0.6 per 100,000 in 2013 to 1.3 in 2014, 2.6 in 2015, and 5.9 in 2016,” said the report. Heroin was the top cause of drug overdose death from 2012 to 2015, said the report.

Source: Manila Bulletin December 13, 2018 01:41 UTC