Opioid, heroin overdose deaths climb in West; Nevada holds steady

Illegally manufactured fentanyl likely drove an increase in national overdose deaths between 2013 and 2017, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Friday.

Opioids accounted for more than two-thirds of all drug overdose deaths in 2017, a rate increase of 12 percent from the previous year, the CDC said.

While overdose death rates linked to prescription opioids and heroin were stable between 2016 and 2017, the overdose rates increased for opioids overall and for non-methadone synthetic opioids, which includes fentanyl and tramadol, a pain reliever.

Fentanyl-related deaths are on the rise in western states, the report said, including Arizona, California and Oregon, though Nevada didn’t see a statistically significant increase.

Of the 70,237 reported overdose deaths nationwide in 2017, 47,600 were linked to opioids.

Nevada’s death rate went unchanged between 2016 and 2017 at 13.3 per 100,000 people, with the prescription opioid-related death rate decreasing by 2.2 percent, from 8.9 per 100,000, to 8.7.

Death rates linked to heroin and synthetic opioids like fentanyl increased, though also not by a statistically significant amount. Nevada’s heroin-related death rate increased from 2.9 per 100,000, based on 86 deaths in 2016, to 3.1 per 100,000, or 94 deaths in 2017.

Deaths in the state due to synthetic opioid overdose rose from 1.7 per 100,000 to 2.2 per 100,000. In other words, 53 deaths in 2016 and 66 in 2017.

Contact Jessie Bekker at jbekker@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter.