...Overall, white life expectancy still grew because other things were improving. Deaths from heart disease — the nation’s No. 1 killer — dropped significantly, and that alone added a year to white life expectancy. Nearly one more year was added because of falling death rates from cancer, stroke, and motor vehicle crashes, the researchers found.
But then drugs and alcohol subtracted about 4 months from life expectancy, according to Kenneth Kochanek, a CDC statistician who was the report’s lead author. No other cause of death had a bigger negative impact, he said...
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