The Opioid Epidemic Might Be Much Worse Than We Thought
A new paper suggests that death certificates dramatically undercounted the number of people dying from opioid overdoses.
It can be hard to comprehend the true scope of something as disastrous as the opioid epidemic. Perhaps that’s why it’s been compared with falling 747s and crashing cars. But in fact, knowing exactly how many people have perished is crucial to stopping the deaths.
That’s why Elaine Hill and Andrew Boslett, economists at the University of Rochester, were so concerned when they found that many potential opioid deaths aren’t counted as such. In the fall of 2018, Hill and Boslett were studying how deaths from overdoses of opioids, such as heroin or OxyContin, were
