Page 13 - Addiction and Overdose: Confronting an American Crisis

commonly mix into heroin and prescription painkillers to provide a
stronger high.
The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—
the US government agency charged with promoting the health and safety of
Americans—reports a startling spike in fentanyl-related overdose deaths.
Mixing illegally manufactured fentanyl with heroin significantly increases
its potency, and users can therefore easily overdose. “Drug incidents and
overdoses related to fentanyl are occurring at an alarming rate throughout
the United States and represent a significant threat to public health and
safety,” Michele Leonhart of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
said in 2015. Legal and illegally manufactured Fentanyl are included in the
CDC’s 2015 data regarding death by opioid overdose.
Adam Kull didn’t know that the heroin he injected contained fentanyl. He
never stood a chance. He died almost instantly.

By The nuMbers

» More than fifty-two thousand people died of drug overdoses in
the United States in 2015.
» Heroin caused nearly thirteen thousand of those deaths.
» Heroin laced with synthetic fentanyl is thirty to fifty times
more potent—and, therefore, more dangerous—than
straightheroin.

Addiction and Overdose in AmericA 13