[Wash Examiner] Drug cocktails of cocaine and opioids have caused a surge in deaths since 2010, the Washington Examiner found in an analysis of mortality data.More than 10,100 people died from mixing the drugs in 2017, according to the analysis based on data from death certificates assembled into an online database by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The combination of cocaine and the powerful opioid fentanyl proved particularly deadly, killing 7,241 people.
The latest figures show an increase in the number deaths caused by opioids and cocaine of nearly 76 percent since 2012.
Furthermore, deaths from cocaine and crack alone, not mixed with opioids, neared the same levels in 2017 that they were about a decade prior, following what had been a leveling-off period. In 2017, 3,811 people died from cocaine or crack.
Federal health officials have been closely watching drug death data, noting that while the opioid crisis involving prescription painkillers, heroin, and fentanyl has generated a lot of attention, many people are succumbing to other drugs or to mixtures of drugs.
"It reminds us we need to pay attention to these trends every year because they can change rather rapidly," Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said when shown a copy of the data.
The figures were obtained through the CDC’s Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research, or WONDER database. The database collects information about causes of death, such as the types of drugs found during an autopsy. In a smaller proportion of cases, alcohol and benzodiazepines, such as Valium, also contributed to cocaine deaths.