title: What’s the Leading Killer of American Adults Under 50? Drug Overdose.
text: 21st Century Wire says Last April, the UN general assembly met to discuss how the world s nations can  combat the global drug problem.  It was just the latest non-event in a long line of categorical failures, led by the United States. Ever since US president Richard Nixon declared the  War on Drugs  in 1971, the international narcotics trade has grown from strength to strength, in a black global market that is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. After Nixon, other US presidents tried to champion the issue, from Reagan to Clinton, Bush and Obama. Each of them presided over one epic failure after another. However, where long-term data is available, it does point to systematic failures in drug policies. A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2013 found that despite efforts to limit the supply of these drugs, since 1990 prices have fallen while the purity of the drugs has increased. The trends were similar in the US and in Europe. The authors  conclusion was clear:  These findings suggest that expanding efforts at controlling the global illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing.  (The Guardian)As a direct result of the policies of western governments led by the US, and their corrupt accomplices in the international banking, UN and NGO sectors  in 2017, cheaper, newer and more deadly drugs continue to ruin families and communities, and millions of lives in the new western underclass and youth population Zero HedgeThe opioid crisis that is ravaging urban and suburban communities across the US claimed an unprecedented 59,000 lives last year, according to preliminary data gathered by the New York Times. If accurate, that s equivalent to a roughly 19% increase over the approximately 52,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2015, the NYT reported last year.Overdoses, made increasingly common by the introduction of fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids into the heroin supply, are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. And all evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017. One coroner in Western Pennsylvania told a local newspaper that his office is literally running out of room to store the bodies, and that it was recently forced to buy a larger freezer.The initial data points to large increases in these types of deaths in states along the East Coast, particularly Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine. In Ohio, which filed a lawsuit last week accusing five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic, the Times estimated that overdose deaths increased by more than 25 percent in 2016.In some Ohio counties, deaths from heroin have virtually disappeared. Instead, the primary culprit is fentanyl or one of its many analogues. In Montgomery County, home to Dayton, of the 100 drug overdose deaths recorded in January and February, only three people tested positive for heroin; 97 tested positive for fentanyl or another analogue.In some states in the western half of the US, data suggest deaths may have leveled off for the time being   or even begun to decline. Experts believe that the heroin supply west of the Mississippi River, traditionally dominated by a variant of the drug known as black tar which is smuggled over the border from Mexico, isn t as easily adulterated with lethal analogues as the powder that s common on the East Coast Continue this story at Zero HedgeREAD MORE WAR ON DRUGS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire War on Drugs FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV 