Patterns and history of prescription drug use among opioid-related drug overdose cases in British Columbia, Canada, 2015-2016

Drug overdoses involving opioids have been dramatically increasing in North America since 2000, with a more rapid rise in the last several years (Fischer et al., 2018; Rudd et al., 2016a, b; Rudd et al., 2016a, b). Opioid overdoses have been described as occurring in the context of an intertwined epidemic driven by increasing availability of prescribed and diverted opioids since the 1990s (Slavova et al., 2017; Unick et al., 2013). More recently, statistics show an unprecedented increase in drug overdose deaths that have been linked to the replacement of heroin and diverted pharmaceutical opioids with fentanyl and its analogues, extremely potent opioids, into the illegal drug supply (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2017; Seth et al., 2018; Vivolo-Kantor et al., 2018).
Source: Drug and Alcohol Dependence - Category: Addiction Authors: Source Type: research