Seven years ago, fatalities from opiates overtook fatalities due to road accidents in the United States. Sadly, the same phenomenon is now playing out in England. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that last year 1,732 people died in traffic accidents in the U.K. compared with 1,989 who died due to opiates in England alone.
New psychoactive substances, referred to as “legal highs,” have received significant media attention, and deaths due to these drugs have risen by 40 percent, but opiate deaths now outnumber legal-high deaths by 19 to 1, despite a steady decline in opiate use in England and Wales over the last decade.
Of course, opiates are not the only problem—deaths due to cocaine have reached the highest on record at 320, increasing by nearly 30 percent since last year—but opiates are what we should really be focusing on.
