United States | The opioid epidemic

Black Americans have overtaken white victims in opioid death rates

The reasons for a lethal shift

|Washington, DC

THE TYPICAL face of America’s opioid epidemic has long been that of a white man from a post-industrial town in the Appalachian mountains. White victims have accounted for 78% of the more than 500,000 opioid-overdose deaths since the late 1990s. In 2017 counties in Appalachia experienced rates 72% higher than the average for the rest of the country.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “A lethal shift”

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