CDC: Black Americans Had Highest Drug Overdose Death Rate At Start Of Pandemic
Drug overdose death rates increased substantially among Black Americans and Native Americans during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new CDC report published on July 22.
Overdose fatalities skyrocketed by 44 percent among Black Americans, 39 percent for Native Americans and just 22 percent in the white population.
“Racism, a root cause of health disparities, continues to be a serious public health risk that directly affects the wellbeing of millions of Americans, and, as a result, affects the health of our entire nation,” Smithsonian Magazine quoted Dr. Debra Houry, acting principal deputy director of the CDC, at a press conference about the data. “The disproportionate increase in overdose death rates among Blacks and American Indian and Alaska Native people may partly be due to health inequities, like unequal access to substance use treatment and treatment biases.”
According to the data, opioids accounted for 75 percent of all drug overdose fatalities in 2020. There were 91,799 overall drug overdose deaths that year, a 30 percent increase from 2019. By 2021, the rate of increase fell to 15 percent.
At the same time, researchers found that Blacks had the lowest rate, 8.3 percent, of treatment for substance abuse. Conversely, white people had the highest rate of previous treatment at 16.4 percent.
Income inequality also played a role in overdose deaths. "Among Black people, overdose rates in counties with the most income inequality were more than twice those of counties that had less income inequality," Mbabazi Kariisa, the lead author of the report, said.
