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| Death-rate due to accidental and "undetermined" drug overdose. 2023 data. |
Crude Death-rate by five-year age bin. This is surprising because the age-group from 30-to-59 is higher than 20-to-24 by a factor of three.
Heat maps by year
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| 2018 |
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| 2019 |
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| 2020 |
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| 2021 |
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| 2022 |
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| 2023 |
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| 2018-through-2023 inclusive |
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| Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia |
It seems odd that the death-rate often shows very sharp changes between one state and another. For example, Northern Alabama and Mississippi are part of Appalachia but the high death-rate due to drug overdoses stops as sharply as a chalk-line at the Tennessee border.
Maybe the drug-dealer is marketing drugs to doctors and that incentive structures differ by sales region.
Image of selection panel in response to a question by Fred Lewers
Could be skewed by how statistics are collected by state health agencies?
ReplyDeleteOr it could be bias by medical examiners.
DeleteCounties with large Roman Catholic populations are significantly less likely to have an "iffy" death ruled a suicide than in counties with lower RC percentages.
Roman Catholic theology used to be that it was impossible for people who committed suicide to enter heaven. That has since softened but there is still a strong revulsion around suicides.
That is also confounded by RC being more urban that some other denominations. Since there are often riders on life-insurance policies that invalidate the policy if the holder commits suicide, the medical examiner in urban areas seem more reluctant to deprive the next-of-kin of the policy payout.
It's interesting how the scale changes ranges from year to year and most of the medium areas don't go down a color.
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting the ones that go from no data to dark colors from 1 year to the next. Looks like reporting is incomplete but those numbers are still shockingly high.
What constitutes a drug overdose? Is alcohol poisoning considered a drug overdose? Or is liver failure listed as COD? I had a friend that drank himself to death. Stone cold alcoholic, yet he died because of liver failure, which was 100% caused by drinking. Meth use in his younger years didn't help but he kicked that habit. Regulatory framework can change the COD reporting.
ReplyDeleteI took a snip of the selection panel of the CDC Wonder site and added it to the blog post to answer those questions.
DeleteThank you
DeleteYou'd think that OD rates would be much higher in new users who are unaware of their limits and haven't developed a tolerance, and I suspect this still holds true for alcohol.
ReplyDeleteFor hard drugs, especially modern synthetics, I suspect lack of quality control (e.g. non-uniform mixing when cutting for potency) in some markets and with some drugs is a major driver behind OD, especially in older users who you would expect to have a "known good" supplier and an understanding of the potency of their supply, and their own personal tolerance.
I suspect OD deaths would drop by an order of magnitude if the old school (Pre-1914) drugs were rescheduled and available from your local white coat pharmacist in reliable potency.