A new survey finds that roughly one in three Americans report knowing someone who has died from a drug overdose.
A poll conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that 32% of people know someone who has died from a drug overdose, and those who said they knew someone who died from drug use were also more likely to support policies aimed at curbing addiction, the poll found.
According to the survey results, Published Mobilizing people who have lost family members to drug addiction could be a lever to enact larger policy changes on addiction, researchers say, in a paper published Friday in JAMA Network.
Experts also said opioids, often prescribed by doctors for pain management, have fueled a rise in overdose deaths in recent years, particularly with the proliferation of powerful synthetic drugs such as fentanyl and combination therapies.
More than 1 million people have died from drug overdoses in the United States since 1999, and while researchers are still studying why, less is known about the impact on the families and friends of those who die, researchers say.
The survey also found that the personal costs of overdose are more prevalent among lower-income earners, but do not differ significantly across political parties.
About 30% of Democrats said they had lost someone to a drug overdose, while 33% of Republicans and 34% of independents said the same.
“This cross-sectional study found that 32% of U.S. adults reported knowing someone who had died from a drug overdose, and a personal overdose loss was associated with higher odds of supporting addiction as an important policy issue,” the researchers wrote. “The findings suggest that mobilizing this group may be a lever to promote larger policy change.”
A similar study looked at drug overdose deaths from 2011 to 2021 and estimated that more than 321,000 children in the United States lost a parent to a drug overdose.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug overdose deaths in the United States will decline slightly in 2023, marking the first decrease in annual overdose deaths since 2018. Still, the overall number of deaths will be very high, with more than 107,000 people expected to die from drug overdoses in 2023.
