US drug overdose epidemic has yet to peak

There is increasing alarm among experts that the US drug overdose epidemic, that kills more Americans than car crashes and guns, continues to steadily increase; overdose deaths have more than doubled over the past decade with half caused by prescription painkillers, but increasingly by heroin. Stigma and inadequate access to help are the biggest barriers in overcoming the crisis. The trend is now similar to that of the HIV epidemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said Robert Anderson, the C.D.C.’s chief of mortality statistics, earlier this year.

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