Supercoolmayo
Superstar
Recent surge in U.S. drug overdose deaths has hit Black men the hardest
BY JOHN GRAMLICH
Nearly 92,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2020, marking a 30% increase from the year before, a 75% increase over five years and by far the highest annual total on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Preliminary figures suggest that the 2021 death toll from overdoses may be even higher.
While overdose death rates have increased in every major demographic group in recent years, no group has seen a bigger increase than Black men. As a result, Black men have overtaken White men and are now on par with American Indian or Alaska Native men as the demographic groups most likely to die from overdoses.
This Pew Research Center analysis examines how drug overdose death rates in the United States differ by gender, race and ethnicity. It is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Drug overdose death rates for all racial and ethnic groups come from the CDC WONDER database – specifically, the database showing underlying causes of death by bridged-race categories for the years 1999 through 2020. Bridged-race categories include people of one race, as well as those who are multiracial. For those who are multiracial, the CDC selects a single race to allow for consistent comparisons. Read more about bridged-race categories here. Pew Research Center relied on the CDC’s bridged-race database instead of the single-race database to examine how drug overdose death rates changed over the 2015-2020 period; the single-race database covers only the 2018-2020 period.
....
Read more: Recent surge in U.S. drug overdose deaths has hit Black men the hardest