The Final Call

Opioid Crisis, Suicide, Sickness Continue Hampering U.S. Life Expectancy

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People are dying younger for the third year in a row, according to the recently released Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Mortality in the United States, 2017, report. Driving that decrease in life expectancy is an increase in deaths: there were 69,255 more deaths in the U.S. in 2017 than there were in 2016.

“The latest CDC data show that the U.S. life expectancy has declined over the past few years. Tragically, this troubling trend is largely driven by deaths from drug overdose and suicide. Life expectancy gives us a snapshot of the Nation’s overall health and these sobering statistics are a wakeup call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable,” explained CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield in a statement.

The top ten causes of death in 2017 were the same as the top ten in 2016: heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, and suicide. The report was released Nov. 29.

Americans, on average, live to the age of 78.6 years old—a decrease from 78.7 years in 2016.

Women continue to outlive men. In both 2016 and 2017, female life expectancy was 81.1 years, while male life expectancy dropped from 76.2 years in 2016 to 76.1 in 2017.

While most races did not experience significant changes in their death rate over the year, the rate increased by 0.6 percent for White males and by 0.9 percent for White females. Black females were the only group that experienced a 0.8 percent decreasing death rate between 2016 and 2017. That means Black women they lived a little longer.

The number three reason Americans are dying younger is unintentional injuries and that includes drug overdoses.  The opioid crisis is getting worse not better.

The synthetic opioid-related overdose death rate rose by an average of 45 percent in 2017. A record number of deaths— 47,600—were caused by drugs like Fentanyl, heroin, and prescription narcotics.

U.S. drug overdose deaths totaled 70,237 in 2017, nearly 6,600 more than in 2016. The rate increased from about six overdose deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to nearly 22 per 100,000 in 2017.

While the opioid crisis has been viewed as a White rural crisis, since 2014, the national rate of fatal drug overdoses has increased more than twice as fast among Blacks as among Whites, according to the CDC.  This crisis has for years been slowly moving into cities where addicts are Black, older and their first contact with drugs was not a doctor’s prescription.

They are long term functional drug users who have survived the spread of heroin use in cities that for some, goes all the way back to the Vietnam war era.

Researchers found that age also influenced these deaths. Adults between 25 and 54 experienced the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in 2017. The 25-to-34 group had nearly 38 overdose deaths per 100,000, the 35-to-44 group had 39 per 100,000, and the 45-to-54 group had about 38 per 100,000. 

The greatest increase in drug overdose death rates was among adults between 55 and 64 for the period 1999 to 2017: About four deaths per 100,000 occurred in this group in 1999, compared with 28 per 100,000 in 2017.

Where you live also matters when it comes to drug overdose deaths. The 2017 rate in West Virginia was nearly 58 overdose deaths per 100,000 people, in Ohio about 46 per 100,000, in Pennsylvania about 44 per 100,000, and in the District of Columbia, 44 per 100,000.

D.C. is ground zero for this crisis for Blacks.  In 2017, the District saw 279 people die of opioid overdoses, a number higher than the city’s homicides and more than three times the number of opioid deaths in 2014.

According to the District’s chief medical examiner, Roger Mitchell, Jr., more than 70 percent of cases involved Fentanyl or something similar, and more than 80 percent of the victims were Black.

Texas (about 10 drug overdose deaths per 100,000), North Dakota (about nine per 100,000), South Dakota and Nebraska (both about eight per 100,000) had the lowest rates in 2017.

Suicide has steadily increased over the years.  The rate has increased from about 10 suicides per 100,000 in 1999 to 14 per 100,000 in 2017, according to CDC data.   Female suicides increased at a higher rate than male suicides during this period, though more men than women die by suicide each year.

Princeton Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton have researched the declining life expectancy in their article, Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife Among White non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century.

They attribute the increase in drug overdoses and suicides to “deaths of despairs” because of the declining lifestyles and opportunities for uneducated Whites. They spoke about it to Journalist Michael Goldfarb, Nov. 19. 

“Someone takes their life either with a gun or a rope or takes their life slowly with drugs or alcohol,” Dr. Case said.

Their report was first published in 2015. “This increase for Whites was largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis,” explained the report. 

“Self-reported declines in health, mental health, and ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work, as well as clinically measured deteriorations in liver function, all point to growing distress in this population.”

They updated their research in 2017 to show what they discovered were these rising “deaths of despair”. 

They now linked the growth in deaths to a “cumulative disadvantage over life, in the labor market, in marriage and child outcomes, and in health” triggered by fewer job opportunities for those without college degrees.

That’s also the life of many Blacks and Latinos but the research doesn’t show an increase in their deaths.  That’s the puzzle the researchers are trying to figure out.  Life is better for Whites than so many in America, yet they are dying more than any other group from despair.

Researchers looked at data from more than 1,000 regions around the country and found the rate of deaths for middle age Whites rose in nearly every part of the country. Regardless of whether it was a rural or urban part of the U.S, and the trend seemed to hit men and women similarly.

They are using drugs more than ever, drinking alcohol more than ever and committing suicide more than ever. 

“Ultimately, we see our story as about the collapse of the White, high school educated, working class after its heyday in the early 1970s, and the pathologies that accompany that decline,” report researchers conclude.