As part of our involvement with several projects that address the opioid crisis, we’ve explored the related public data from many angles, and as a result, we’ve gained a deeper understanding of both its potential applications and its limitations. For example, many of Emprata’s projects have employed the use of mortality data from the CDC WONDER Multiple Cause of Death database, which is the most comprehensive source of U.S. mortality data available, though it does not contain specific information about each death.
This lack of granular mortality data has recently become more of an issue due to the rising number of deaths involving fentanyl, an extremely powerful opioid that is often found in combination with other drugs and does not have its own code within the CDC WONDER system. Therefore, we searched for other public mortality data sources, and while there isn’t much of this kind of data available, we did discover two locations where this data was released, perhaps in order to raise awareness of the drug problems in these areas:
- Hartford, CT: Accidental Drug Related Deaths 2012-2018
- San Diego, CA: Leading Causes of Death in San Diego County
After analyzing the data, we believe that these two areas are currently suffering from two very distinct drug epidemics that are so dissimilar from each other that insights can be gained from comparing them. To that end, we created the following visualization, including more of a focus on fentanyl, which has impacted each area quite differently. We’ve also included a few of our own insights below the visualization, but we encourage you to explore the data to draw your own conclusions as well.
Insights
1) Fentanyl is clearly more of a problem in Hartford than in San Diego, and after doing some further research, we discovered a theory that this is because the heroin found in San Diego is commonly found in “black tar” form, which comes into the U.S. through the westernmost part of Mexico and is very difficult to mix with other drugs due to its tar-like composition. The heroin in Hartford, on the other hand, is almost exclusively in powder form.
2) There has been a debate over whether or not fentanyl is being deliberately mixed with cocaine, and a further debate over whether this is becoming a more common practice or is just a rare occurrence that is being over-exaggerated in the media. Upon further investigation, it seems clear that in Hartford this is a warranted concern, as the number of deaths 2018 that involved a combination of cocaine and fentanyl (with no other drugs) was three times the number of deaths that involved cocaine alone. In San Diego, this appeared to be less of a problem, but it seems that cocaine is less of a problem there overall.
3) San Diego doesn’t have an opioid crisis as much as it has a methamphetamine crisis, and this is obvious from even a cursory review of the data, especially compared to Hartford, where the methamphetamine problem is relatively non-existent. In addition, it appears likely that there is an increase in the practice of lacing methamphetamine with fentanyl in San Diego, similar to the cocaine issue in Hartford.
Conclusion
There is strong evidence to show that “The Opioid Crisis” in the U.S. is quickly evolving into “The Fentanyl Crisis,” which continues to expand its reach beyond opioids alone.
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