Fewer “Deaths of Despair” Increases U.S. Life Expectancy
addiction, addictive substances, assisted suicide, cancer, Culture & Ethics, deaths of despair, despair, fentanyl, New York Times, opioid painkillers, prosperity, suicide
Good news: U.S. life expectancy has increased. From the New York Times story: Life expectancy increased for the first time in four years in 2018, the federal government said Thursday, raising hopes that a benchmark of the nation’s health may finally be stabilizing after a rare and troubling decline that was driven by a surge in drug overdoses. Part of the reason for the improvement was a decrease in what are known as “deaths of despair”: Deaths from overdoses dropped by 4.1 percent in 2018, to 67,367 from 70,237 in 2017. The decrease was largely driven by a dip in deaths from prescription opioid painkillers, which set off the opioid epidemic in the late 1990s before heroin and, later, fentanyl moved in. Provisional data suggests those deaths continued to fall…