400 deaths in Louisville? That’s an insanely high number to me. Maybe I am just out of touch. I have seen stories that pushers have been lacing heroin with a new very strong synthetic opiate, and that the addicts are overdosing because they shoot up a ‘normal’ size dose not knowing that this week’s supply is 10x stronger. I also read that for the drug pushers they have sort of crossed a rubicon - the addicts now are addicted to the synthetic and regular old heroin won’t work and has almost no demand. Every junkie now wants the synthetic.
But I didn’t know it killed 400 people in Louisville alone. The death toll across the country must be enormous. This is a big problem.
Accidental overdoses claimed 364 in 2016 in Louisville. It was 415 in 2017. That was about 3% of all metro Louisville deaths, tied with diabetes, septicitis, and Alzheimer's as causes of death. Stroke (6%), heart disease (21%) and cancer (23%) combined took 50%, of course.