Could Soaring Overdose Mortality in U.S. Happen Elsewhere?

Drug overdose death rates in the U.S. far outpace those of similar developed nations, but a researcher warns that other countries are not immune to falling victim to the same factors that have caused overdose mortality to soar here.

A study published online last week in Population and Development Review found that the drug overdose death rate in the U.S. is now 3.5 times higher on average than that of its peer nations. The study's review of death rates in 18 countries was based on 1994-2015 data from the Human Mortality Database and the World Health Organization Mortality Database.

Moreover, lead author Jessica Ho of the University of Southern California reported, the U.S. death rate from overdose is more than 27 times higher than the rates in the surveyed countries with the lowest mortality: Italy and Japan.

As recently as in the early 2000s, Nordic nations had the world's highest levels of drug overdose mortality, but the U.S. has now that held that spot for more than a decade. However, the study suggests that some of the same factors that have contributed to the crisis of fatal overdose in the U.S. could begin to affect other nations.

“The countries that now look like they are at greatest risk of following in the U.S.'s footsteps are other Anglophone countries like Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom,” Ho said.

The study also offers the theory that in the same way that tobacco companies started to target the undeveloped world when their U.S. revenues started slipping, makers of prescription opioids may take a similar path, threatening to cause increased risk of crises elsewhere.