Top Trump administration officials say drug overdose deaths are surging amid the coronavirus pandemic, driven by increased substance use due to anxiety, social isolation and depression.
A White House drug policy office analysis shows an 11.4 percent year-over-year increase in fatalities for the first four months of 2020, confirming experts’ early fears that precautions like quarantines and lockdowns combined with economic uncertainty would exacerbate the addiction crisis.
“The pandemic has caused my level of concern to go up,” White House drug czar Jim Carroll told POLITICO in an interview, acknowledging that overdose deaths were already starting to rise in the past year, after posting the first decline in three decades in 2018.
Carroll noted that not all states have reported their numbers, but experts expect the grim death count to keep rising. The surge is prompting the drug policy office and federal agencies to convene regular meetings to size up how the pandemic has disrupted the opioid response.
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