March 2 (UPI) —<\/span> Deaths after drug overdoses were 16% higher among Black Americans than in White Americans in 2020, the first time this has been the case since 1999, an analysis published Wednesday by JAMA Network Open found.<\/p>\n Overdose death rates among Black Americans increased to 37 per 100,000 people in the general population in 2020, up from 25 per 100,000 people in 2019, the data showed.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n In 2020, the overdose death rate among White Americans was 32 per 100,000 people in the general population, the researchers said.<\/p>\n American Indian or Alaska Native individuals experienced the highest rate of overdose death in 2020, at 41 per 100,000 people in the general population, according to the researchers.\n<\/p>\n Drug overdose rates among Hispanic or Latin Americans people were the lowest among the groups assessed, at 17 per 100,000 people in the general population, they said.<\/p>\n “Overdose deaths must be treated as an urgent racial justice issue,” study co-author Joseph Friedman told UPI in an email.<\/p>\n “Long-standing inequalities in access to harm reduction, treatment for substance use disorders and access to housing and social services must be addressed,” said Friedman, a social sciences researcher at the University of California-Los Angeles.\n<\/p>\n More than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States in 2020, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n These numbers are expected to increase in the coming years, driven at least in part by the availability of drugs such as fentanyl, which carry a high overdose risk, research suggests.<\/p>\n “One thing we know is key is that illicit drug supply has increasingly become more toxic,” Friedman said.\n<\/p>\n “People think they are buying heroin or pills like Oxycontin, but are actually receiving illicit synthetic opioids, whose strength can fluctuate wildly,” he said.<\/p>\n For this study, Friedman and his colleagues compared overdose deaths by race and ethnicity in the United States as reported to the CDC between 1999 and 2020.<\/p>\n Much of the change in the racial and ethnic make-up of overdose deaths nationally has occurred over the past decade, the researchers said.<\/p>\n In 2010, for example, the overdose death rate for White Americans was 16 per 100,000 people in the general population, or about twice that of Black Americans, the data showed.<\/p>\n From 2019 to 2020, the overdose death rate for Black Americans increased by nearly 50%, while it rose by 40% for Hispanic or Latin Americans and by 30% for American Indian or Alaska Natives, the researchers said.\n<\/p>\n It increased by 26% among White Americans over the same period, they said.<\/p>\n “Percent increases in 2020 were higher than during any prior year for all race and ethnic groups assessed,” Friedman said.<\/p>\n “This is a problem across the board, although it has disproportionately affected minority communities,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Drug overdose deaths among Black Americans surpassed those of White Americans in 2020 for the first time in more than 20 years, according to a new study. Photo by stevepb\/Pixabay March 2 (UPI) — Deaths after drug overdoses were 16% higher among Black Americans than in White Americans in 2020, the first time this has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1008538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[3260,172,94,287,177,3517,28,3852],"class_list":["post-1008537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-americans","tag-among","tag-black","tag-deaths","tag-higher","tag-overdose","tag-study","tag-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Overdose](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Overdose-deaths-higher-among-Black-Americans-than-White-Americans-in-2020.jpg\" "\\"Overdose")
\n<\/div>\nDrug overdose deaths among Black Americans surpassed those of White Americans in 2020 for the first time in more than 20 years, according to a new study. Photo by stevepb\/Pixabay<\/p>\n