Q: A 1927 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog shows that opium could be bought for 10 cents an ounce and delivered to your front door by the United States Postal Service. What was the opioid overdose rate then as compared to the overdose rate now?
—Nelson Marshall, Kennesaw
A: While neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the National Institutes of Health have overdose data going back to 1927, deaths from opioid overdoses have increased greatly over the last 15 years, Jeff Lancashire, spokesman for the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, told Q&A on the News in an email. He said that statistic makes it possible to think there are more opioid overdose deaths now than in 1927.
The age-adjusted rate of overdose deaths in the United States increased from 6.1 per population of 100,000 in 1999 to 16.3 in 2015, according to a 2017 report by the CDC. The number of deaths rose by an average of 10 percent from 1999 to 2006, by 3 percent from 2006 to 2013 and by 9 percent from 2013 to 2015.
In 2015, the percentage of drug overdose deaths involving heroin reached 25 percent, triple the percentage in 2010 of 8 percent.
Overdose deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone also increased from 8 percent to 18 percent between 2010 and 2015. However, deaths involving methadone decreased from 12 percent in 2010 to 6 percent in 2015. Deaths from natural and semisynthetic opioid analgesics, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, decreased from 29 percent in 2010 to 24 percent in 2015.
Opium and opiates, such as morphine and laudanum, were commonly used in the 1800s and early 1900s as treatment for cough, insomnia, anxiety, diarrhea and as an anesthetic, Courtney Lenard, CDC health communications specialist, wrote in an email.
Fast Copy News Service wrote this column; Joe Youorski contributed. Do you have a question? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404-222-2002 or email q&a@ajc.com (include name, phone and city).
About the Author
