You seem to only like data when it supports your position.
Since COVID-19 first started upending life for Americans in March 2020, public health officials have been sounding the alarm about a potential surge in drug overdoses.
www.commonwealthfund.org
Quite the opposite really. The data is the data, and ideally you would develop an expectation of what the data should show based on your hypothesis and let the data tell you if your hypothesis is accurate or not.
85 posted his opinion that the growth was mainly driven by isolation. All I did was ask if that is what the data showed but even in that link you just posted, there are some problems with 85's argument. I'm not arguing that it didn't get worse during the pandemic, clearly it did but there would be many reasons for that and I just didn't buy isolation as the cause.
If Covid isolation was driving the increase, I would expect the increase to start after lockdowns, and I would expect that states with more restrictions would show a more significant increase in overdose deaths compared to states with little to no restrictions. That's not what the data shows though.
Health Alert Network (HAN). Provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
emergency.cdc.gov
"The recent increase in drug overdose mortality began in 2019 and continues into 2020, prior to the declaration of the COVID-19 National Emergency in the United States in March. "
"Synthetic opioids are the primary driver of the increases in overdose deaths. The 12-month count of synthetic opioid deaths increased 38.4% from the 12-months ending in June 2019 compared with the 12-months ending in May 2020 (Figure 1). Of the 38 jurisdictions with available synthetic opioid data,3 37 jurisdictions reported increases in synthetic opioid overdose deaths for this time period. Eighteen of these jurisdictions reported increases greater than 50%, 11 reported increases of 25% to 49%, 7 reported increases of 10% to 24%, 1 reported an increase <10% (See Figure 3). State and local health department reports indicate that the increase in synthetic opioid-involved overdoses is primarily linked to illicitly manufactured fentanyl.4-6 Historically, deaths involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl have been concentrated in the 28 states east of the Mississippi River, where the heroin market has primarily been dominated by white powder heroin.5,7 In contrast, the largest increases in synthetic opioid deaths from the 12-months ending in June 2019 to the 12-months ending in May 2020 occurred in 10 western states (98.0% increase).iii This is consistent with large increases in illicitly manufactured fentanyl availability in western states8 and increases in fentanyl positivity in clinical toxicology drugs tests in the West after the COVID-19 pandemic.9 Increases in synthetic opioid overdose deaths were also substantial in other regions: 12 southern states and the District of Columbia (35.4%), 6 midwestern states (32.1%), and 8 northeastern states and New York City (21.1%) "
