African Americans hit hardest by overdoses

The rate of drug overdose deaths among black men in the United States in 2020 exceeded the rate for white men for the first time since 1999, researchers said, blaming an increasing supply of lethal drugs－especially fentanyl－for the deaths.

There were more than 15,200 overdose deaths among black men in 2020, more than double the number four years earlier, said researchers at the University of California in a study published in JAMA Psychiatry on March 2.

The US overdose crisis is worsening due to "an increasingly toxic illicit drug supply" that may disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minority communities, the study's authors wrote.

"Drug overdose mortality is increasingly becoming a racial justice issue in the US," they wrote.

Fueled by fentanyl

The increase in overdoses among black men is being fueled by widespread use of fentanyl, a fast-acting drug that is 100 times more powerful than morphine. Fentanyl is added surreptitiously to other illegal drugs to enhance their potency.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said mass production of such pills by Mexican cartels has escalated. Federal authorities said they are encountering more pills passing for medication such as oxycodone that contains fentanyl. More than 20 million fake pills were seized last year, the vast majority containing fentanyl, said the DEA.

In 2020, black individuals had the largest percentage increase in overdose mortality at 48.8 percent as compared with white individuals at 26.3 percent, said Joseph Friedman and Helena Hansen, authors of the study.

American Indian or Alaskan Natives had the highest rate of overdose deaths in 2020 at 41.4 deaths per 100,000 people, 30.8 percent higher than the rate for white people.

Black people had the second-highest overdose death rate in 2020, at 36.8 per 100,000. That is 16.3 percent higher than the rate for white people, which was 31.6 per 100,000.

Since 2015, overdose deaths have been rising most rapidly among black and Hispanic communities, the researchers said, and no group has seen a bigger increase than black men. As a result, the overdose rate for black men has surpassed that of white men and is now on par with American Indian or Alaskan Native men as the demographic groups most likely to die from overdoses.

There were 54.1 fatal drug overdoses for every 100,000 black men in the US in 2020. That was similar to the rate among American Indian or Alaskan Native men at 52.1 deaths per 100,000 people, and well above the rates among white men at 44.2 per 100,000, and Hispanic men at 27.3 per 100,000.

There were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the US during the 12-month period ending April 2021, an increase of 28.5 percent during the same period the year before, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

The drug overdose death rate has also risen sharply among black women－144 percent between 2015 and 2020, far outpacing the percentage increases among women in every other racial or ethnic group during the same period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.