More than 100,000 people have died from drug overdoses in the United States during the 12-month period ending April 2021, data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has shown – an almost 30 percent uptick in fatalities from the previous year.The figures, released on Wednesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, showed that deaths from synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl – which can be 100 times more powerful than morphine – helped drive the increase. Synthetic opioids accounted for 64,000 fatal overdoses over the year.Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer but has increasingly been sold illicitly and mixed with other drugs.
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