Opioids are drugs formulated to replicate the painreducing properties of opium . Prescription painkillers like morphine oxycodone and hydrocodone are opioids . Illegal drugs like heroin and illicitly made fentanyl are also opioids . Nearly people died of drug overdoses in and more than twothirds of those deaths involved a synthetic opioid . Overdose deaths have been on the rise for years in the United States but surged amid the Covid pandemic . Annual deaths were nearly higher in than in CDC data shows . An estimated . million Americans aged and older misused opioids in including . million prescription pain relievers and . million heroin users . Experts say the U.S. is in the throes of an opioid epidemic . The AntiHeroin Act bans the production and sale of heroin in the . States and US territories have introduced measures to regulate pain clinics and limit the quantity of opioids that doctors can . dispense to pain clinics . State legislatures have also introduced measures . to limit the . quantity of . opioids that . doctors can dispense . Doctors can write prescriptions for narcotic drugs like OxyContinone that are a long-acting version of painkillers that slowly releases the drug slowly released to patients who were closely monitored by Purdue Pharma and Purdue Pharma . Purdue Pharma pleads guilty for advertising as safer and less addictive than other opioids . OxyContinues to be marketed as safer than OxyContinued to be less addictive . The company pleads with Purdue Pharma’s ‘continued’ and “continued to ‘Continues” to “pregnant” and ‘Pundits” in a ‘safe” with Purdue Pharmaceuticals. “Pundit Pharmaceuticals’
Opioid Crisis Fast Facts: Opioids are being blamed for the rise in
