Without bold and urgent action, including public health policy reform and stricter corporate regulations, an additional 1.2 million people in North America will die of an opioid overdose by 2029, according to an analysis by the Stanford-Lancet Commission.
"Over the past quarter-century, the opioid epidemic has taken nearly 600,000 lives and triggered a cascade of public health catastrophes such as disability, family breakdown, unemployment, and child neglect in North America," Commission chair Keith Humphreys, PhD, said in a news release.
"If no action is taken, by the end of this decade, we are predicting the number of deaths to be twice as high as it has been over the last 20 years," said Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University in California.
The report – Responding to the Opioid Crisis in North America and Beyond: Recommendations of the Stanford-Lancet Commission – was published online February 2 in The Lancet.
Blame It on COVID-19?
The COVID-19 pandemic has both overshadowed and exacerbated the opioid crisis in North America, the Commission points out in their report.
Their analysis suggests that 2020 was the worst year on record for overdose deaths in the US and Canada in terms of both the total number of deaths and percentage annual increase.
