Firing Line –
May 2, 2019 – U.S. health officials say cocaine overdose deaths have been rising. Drug overdose deaths involving cocaine began rising around 2012, and jumped 34 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to a report by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Thursday. The increase at least partly reflects trends in deaths from heroin, fentanyl and other opioid drugs. Many overdose deaths involve someone who took several different drugs, and researchers found that nearly three-quarters of the deaths involving cocaine in 2017 also involved opioids. However, the study found cocaine deaths were up even when opioids were not involved.
