EDITORIAL: Epidemic has life of its own

Aug. 21--Startling new statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrate that the opioid addiction epidemic will be even harder to stop than experts originally predicted. Due to the nature of addiction and market forces, the epidemic has assumed a life of its own.

According to the CDC, about 72,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2017 -- more than the highest annual totals ever recorded for AIDS, vehicle crashes or gun deaths -- and nearly 50,000 of those involved opioids. It is difficult to tie specific numbers of deaths to specific drugs, because many of the fatalities involved the use of more than one drug.

It is clear, however, that deaths due to heroin or prescription opioids leveled off, while deaths soared due to synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl.

That shift also has produced a demographic shift among victims. The highest opioid toll had been among rural whites, but last year there was a sharp increase in deaths among urban blacks. Experts believe that urban blacks addicted to heroin unknowingly have been exposed to heroin laced with fentanyl, which is exponentially more powerful.

The opioid epidemic's roots were in prescribed drugs, prescription painkillers. People hooked on those drugs moved on to cheaper and more powerful heroin and then to fentanyl and other synthetics. Now, after substantial progress has been made in reducing the number of opioid prescriptions, the epidemic among those already addicted has created its own market dynamics. Even though the number of new people addicted to opioids entering through the prescription gateway has declined, it's depressingly clear that the problem is going to get worse.

That doesn't mean that the fight against the epidemic has been futile. And the CDC said death rates started to level off toward the end of 2017. But the bottom line is that this battle is going to be a very long one.

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