CDC STUDY: METEORIC RISE IN NUMBER OF AMERICANS INJECTING DRUGS

A recently released study by the Coalition for Applied Modeling for Prevention (CAMP) and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlights the colossal rise in injection drug use (IDU) in the U.S. in recent years.

• CAMP’s study estimates that in the last decade, IDU has gone up exponentially.
• The most recent data, from 2018, estimated that approximately 4 million Americans injected drugs. This is a fivefold increase from the last approximation, in 2011.

What the numbers say: The burden of fatal and nonfatal overdoses among those who inject drugs has also gone up sharply, according to CAMP’s research. Injection-related overdose deaths tripled from 2007 to 2018. Data also shows that there are about 40 nonfatal overdoses for every fatal overdose of IDU.

“Our estimate of the number of people who inject drugs in the U.S. indicates that services need to be substantially expanded — this includes services to meet harm-reduction needs and efforts to reduce escalating rates of overdose mortality, as well as services to address the spread of infectious diseases,” said Heather Bradley, a lead author of a study that CAMP cited in its findings.