More Americans Than Ever Dying From Alcohol, Drugs and Suicide

More than 150,000 Americans died from alcohol, drugs and suicide in 2017—the highest number since the federal government started collecting such data in 1999, USA Today reports.

Synthetic opioid deaths increased 45 percent between 2016 and 2017, and have increased 10-fold in the last five years, according to a report by the Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust. Americans are now dying at a faster rate from overdoses involving synthetic opioids than they did from all drugs in 1999, the report found.

Overall, deaths due to alcohol, drugs and suicide increased 6 percent between 2016 and 2017.

“Too many of us are dying from preventable causes, and each time we make progress—like with prescription opioids—new problems—like synthetic opioids—appear,” Benjamin F. Miller, Chief Strategy Officer of the Well Being Trust said in a news release.