- The scourge of opioid addiction and related deaths cut through American society again in 2018, capturing headlines and making it the year’s top health story
- Rates of opioid-linked fatal overdoses have doubled over the past decade and topped 70,000 in 2017, the CDC reports
- The chart you see here was from 2016, so you can see how fast this has ranked into the top ten causes of death in the US
- Most of these tragic deaths were among young adults and linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s 50 times more potent than heroin
- For three years in a row, US average life expectancy reversed a long-term upward trend and actually dropped from 79 to 78 years
