At last, a convincing explanation for America’s drug-death crisis
There is a more plausible cause than despair
It is hard to overstate the impact of America’s fentanyl epidemic. The synthetic opioid and its close chemical relatives were involved in about 70% of the country’s 110,000 overdose deaths in 2022. They are now almost certainly the biggest killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 49. Every 14 months or so America loses more people to fentanyl than it has lost in all of its wars combined since the second world war, from Korea to Afghanistan.
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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Opioid overload”
Finance & economics December 9th 2023
- Will China leave behind its economic woes in 2024?
- Will a fiscal mess thwart Japan’s nascent economic growth?
- How to sell free trade to green types
- Why it might be time to buy banks
- Is the world’s most important asset market broken?
- Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?
- At last, a convincing explanation for America’s drug-death crisis
From the December 9th 2023 edition
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