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Some people still may not realize it, but America faces a crisis with opiods, a drug that is killing people at record rates.
In Michigan, drug overdose deaths increased 18 percent from 2015 to 2016, according to provisional data released Thursday by state health officials, Kim Bouffard of the Detroit News reports. .
There were 2,335 drug-related deaths statewide in 2016, compared with 1,981 in 2015, and most were related to opioids.
“This battle is still needing to be fought,” said Dr. Eden Wells, Michigan’s chief medical executive.
“It’s continuing to take lives and cause so much harm,” Wells added. “But the whole state is coming together with multiple initiatives to fight this.”
He said drug overdose deaths claimed 52,404 lives nationally in 2015, and of those, 33,091 deaths, or about 63 percent, were related to opioids.
