Drug and alcohol deaths increasing among US adults 65 and older, CDC data shows
CNN
Jacqueline Howard
30 November 2022
excerpts:
Rates of deaths from drug overdoses among seniors have more than tripled in the past two decades, according to one report published Wednesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. In 2020, more than 5,000 adults 65 and older in the United States died of a drug overdose.
Between 2000 and 2020, the rates rose from 2.4 to 8.8 deaths per 100,000 people among adults 65 and older. Another new report from the National Center for Health Statistics finds that rates of alcohol-induced deaths among adults 65 and older have been climbing since 2011 and rose more than 18% from 2019 to 2020. In 2020, more than 11,000 older adults died of alcohol-induced causes.
Although Kramarow and her colleagues did not analyze what factors could be driving these increases, she said that “it’s not unreasonable to think that the forces affecting younger people also affect people 65 and older.”