Trib editorial: New study charts' opioids' legacy of death

While the mortality rate for most hospitalizations has decreased across the United States in recent years, one condition leading to hospital admissions ending in deaths saw an alarming increase. In fact, it quadrupled from 2000 to 2014.

If you concluded it was opioid-driven hospitalizations, go to the head of the class.

The first national evaluation of opioid-induced mortality rates, based on hospitals' data and published in Health Affairs, dovetails with the grim — and worsening — statistics associated with opioid abuse. While opioid-driven mortality rates remained constant between 1993 and 2000, the rate progressively increased thereafter. Not that any of this is surprising: It's estimated that about 7,000 people today are treated daily in emergency rooms nationwide for opioid abuse, The Washington Free Beacon reports.

Overall, drug overdoses have become the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50, according to medical data. With regard to opioids specifically, the fastest growing rates of hospitalizations occur in patients ages 50 to 64, according to the new study.

But whereas the opioid epidemic has gained attention only in recent years, the hospital-mortality analysis shows that opioid abuse has been destroying lives and devastating communities for nearly two decades.

It shouldn't have taken that long to identify and address the dark, addictive and ultimately deadly side of opioids.