Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
By: EFE Posted Mar 17, 2023, 18:28 pm EDT
One person dies every three hours from drug overdose in NYwhere deaths from drug abuse, especially opioids, have skyrocketed in the last three years, according to the latest data from the New York Department of Health.
Only in the months of May, June and July of last year, the last ones for which official information has been published, 696 people lost their lives, the highest number since the third quarter of 2021, in which 722 people died victims of the drugs.
According to the city’s Health Department, in 80% of the overdoses that end in death the victims had consumed some type of opioid and in 76% fentanyl.
Furthermore, the authorities stress that overdose deaths in New York exceed deaths from homicide, suicide and traffic accidents combined.
According to these data, since at least 2019, the increase in overdose mortality has not stopped growing.
In 2020, 2,103 people died from drug overdoses in New York, 40% more than those who died in 2019, when 1,497 New Yorkers lost their lives. And in 2021, 2,668 people died, that is, an increase of 78% since 2019 and 27% since 2020.
As for the first six months of 2022, the number of overdose deaths was 1,340very close to those registered in all of 2019 and 7.9% more than between January and June 2021.
By districts, The Bronx is the area where the most deaths were recorded in the first six months of last year with a total of 323; followed by Brooklyn, with 255 deaths; Queens, where 211 people lost their lives; Manhattan, where 174 died; and Staten Island, where overdoses claimed 69 lives.
Given the avalanche of deaths recorded in recent years, the authorities have offered free first aid courses to the city’s nightlife venues, where they have also distributed the drug Narcan, which contains naloxone, which can reverse the effects of fentanyl and other opioids.
In its statement, the city recalls that theThe Department of Health offers free courses to teach you to recognize the signs of an overdose and for the correct administration of naloxone.
Keep reading:
• AMLO admits that fentanyl is produced in Mexico and ensures that this drug reaches the US more directly.
• 86% of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking are from the United States, recalls Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost
• Army in Mexico manages to seize 1.8 million fentanyl pills in the border area with California