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The Fourth Wave Of The Opioid Crisis By Kaitlin Sullivan

526 Words3 Pages

The problems of the opioid crisis in the United States have always been of great concern, but the recent developments in this respect are very worrisome. One of the articles about the “fourth wave” of the opioid crisis by Kaitlin Sullivan was published in NBC News on September 14, 2023, according to the researchers. The stage is marked by a dramatic rise in overdose deaths related to the combination of stimulants and the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Sullivan highlights the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic by starting her article with a statistic: the number of overdose deaths in 2021 has surpassed 100,000 for the first time. Most of these fatalities were attributed to synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyl, thus representing a significant divergence from the earlier stages …show more content…

A study in the journal Addiction cited by Sullivan, which was done by Chelsea Shover from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, shows that the percentage of overdoses involving fentanyl and a stimulant rose by more than fifty times from 2010 to 2021. This figure emphasizes the seriousness of the problem and the need for immediate action. The article also points out the interesting regional peculiarities of drug combinations. In the northeast, cocaine is often mixed with fentanyl, where in the west and most of the midwest, meth is the main drug used. This geographical disparity is a result of the heterogeneous and diversified structure of the substance abuse patterns in the country. The article deals with the difficulties in reading overdose information and the intended use of drugs. The intention of some polysubstance overdoses may be intentional, while others happen unintentionally due to fentanyl mixed with other illicit drugs. The article focuses on weaknesses in autopsy reports to specifically identify details of drug-related

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