DEA Releases New Drug Overdose Death Figures: Guns Safer than Prescription Drugs

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DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg today announced results from the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA), which found that drug overdose deaths are the leading cause of injury death in the United States, ahead of deaths from motor vehicle accidents and firearms. In 2013, more than 46,000 people in the United States died from a drug overdose and more than half of those were caused by prescription painkillers and heroin.
These are 2013 numbers, so let’s compare to other causes of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

A drug overdose, with a death rate of 13.9 per 100,000, is almost four times as common as a cause of death than gun homicides (3.6 per 100,000). Death from prescription drugs (7.2 per 100,000) is twice as common as gun homicides.

Those are the total numbers. If you prefer your stats in the often used format of x per 100,000, here you go:

Obviously, homicides aren’t exactly a leading cause of death in the US, and gun homicides, even less so. Accidental death by firearms (0.2 per 100,000) is a small blip.

For all those concerned parents who think little Johnny is likely to get gunned down on the street would be better advised to keep tabs on their prescription painkillers, as Johnny is far more likely to die from popping those than from any gun in your house or in the hands of a school mate.

And, of course, one is almost three times as likely to die in an auto accident (death rate of 10.7 per 100,000) than as a result of a homicide.

Moreover, nothing listed here is even in the top ten of causes of death in the US. You’re much, much more likely to die from suicide, or “influenza and pneumonia”than anything listed above.

Many people don’t fear heart disease like they fear gun violence because they feel they have some control over it, and often judge their risk of an untimely demise by a heart attack to be much lower than it actually is. Simultaneously, they greatly overestimate their chances of dying due to homicide or a gun accident .

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