U.S. Deaths Soar as a Result of Opioid Epidemic

In 2015, more than 25,000 people in the U.S. died from overdosing on opioids like fentanyl, oxycodone and hydrocodone, which are either derived from opium or synthetic analogs of those narcotics. This is more than twice as many as a decade earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. They now kill more Americans than homicides and are approaching traffic accidents as a cause of death. The population that suffers the most from opioid abuse is middle-aged whi...