Yahoo Finance’s Adriana Belmonte reports on the rise in drug overdose deaths in the United States amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Video Transcript

JARED BLIKRE: The overdose crisis in the US is mounting thanks to the unique challenges of the pandemic. According to the latest CDC data, drug overdose deaths increased by 31% recently to a record high. And here to break down all of the stats and the information for us is Adriana Belmonte. And Adriana, thank you for joining us here. You're writing for us at Yahoo Finance. I encourage everybody to read this article going up shortly. What are some of the findings here? And how concerning is it given the status of the pandemic right now?

ADRIANA BELMONTE: Yes, so we often talk about the financial toll of the pandemic, even a little bit of the mental health toll, but we don't realize that for people who've already had existing mental health issues, like substance use disorder, the pandemic just exacerbated it. Whether it's the loss of a loved one, the anxiety over getting sick, or just the social isolation, the pandemic has just completely, completely wrecked these stats. It was already going up and it just got even worse.

KARINA MITCHELL: And so what are some of the opioids that are actually causing the issue? Is it sort of cocktail mixes that are out there? Is it prescription opioids?

ADRIANA BELMONTE: Yes, so synthetic opioids accounted for more than 63% of all the fatal drug overdoses. So synthetic means that it's not natural. So that, fentanyl is the most common one. And it's becoming more and more popular over the years, and it's especially becoming popular because of the regulation of prescription opioids with everything going on with all these lawsuits.

They're under more scrutiny, so people are turning to more things on the streets. And with fentanyl, it's extremely potent. It's more potent than heroin or morphine, and it's cheap and easy to ship, and so that's why it's easier for drug dealers to put those on the streets rather than the drugs that people are normally used to.

JARED BLIKRE: And Adriana, one of the things that stood out to me in your story that I kind of knew tangentially, but you really give some good detail, on how the specific ways in which people were not able to access medical services, critical services to help them with addiction during the pandemic. I'm just wondering if you were able to find, has some of that at least gotten a little bit better in the transition period that we're in right now?

ADRIANA BELMONTE: Yeah, it definitely has improved. But at the beginning of the pandemic when everything was shut down, this included things like methadone clinics, needle exchange programs. And these are, methadone clinics in particular, it's the medication assisted treatment. So for people who are trying to wean off their addiction, they consume methadone under the direction of a doctor, which helps them maintain their urges.

And when these are shut down or they can't access group therapy, things like that, it's easy to relapse and to fall back into these bad habits. And that's what we saw, especially towards the beginning. Back in the chart, you saw March 2020 when everything really took off. That's when things got its worst.

KARINA MITCHELL: And I'm just wondering, when you look at sort of global statistics, why are the cases here in this country so much higher than they are in the rest of the world? And what do you see as part of the solution? How do we break away from these record number of cases?

ADRIANA BELMONTE: I mean, I don't think there's any clear solution at this point, because it's been going on for years. I part of the problem is that the ports of entry, for example, people talk about the border as a way for drugs to get into the United States, but it's really the ports of entry. So that means you shipping. Things are easily able to be smuggled into there. And also, just the way again, the culture of prescription opioids at least, it kind of created this problem that we have now.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, and I want to kind of get into some of the, a little bit of the details there. And you provide a lot of facts and figures in your article. Can we put a dollar amount on this problem? Is that possible?

[CHUCKLES]

You know, these numbers are always changing. I know it's cost billions over the years. I don't know the exact number at this point, but I have written about it in the past I think about two years ago, and I knew that it totaled a massive amount, because you factor in people left out of the workforce, the cost of treatment for people struggling, and also just the regulation that has to happen as a result. It's cost the economy a lot of money.