Are opioid deaths reducing our average life expectancy?

Canada

July 18, 2018 9:11 am

Updated: July 18, 2018 9:58 am

Are opioid deaths reducing our average life expectancy? Canada now investigating

By Andrew Russell National Online Journalist, Investigative  Global News

A reporter holds up an example of the amount of fentanyl that can be deadly, Tuesday, June 6, 2017.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP

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Canada is investigating whether the opioid crisis that has killed thousands across the country is dragging down how long people are expected to live.
The Public Health Agency of Canada confirms it is looking into opioid-related overdoses and how it might be affecting the average life expectancy, a trend which has occurred in the U.S.
Rebecca Purdy, a spokesperson for the federal health agency, said the calculations are complex, but help contextualize the effects of a health event on a population.

“Now that more opioid-related mortality data are available at the national level, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) plans to undertake a robust life expectancy analysis in the coming months, and results will be disseminated,” Purdy said in an email.

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Life expectancy can reflect how healthy a country’s general population is, taking into account things like health care, lifestyle, obesity rates and rates of diseases. Currently, a person born in 2017 is expected to live to just over 82 years (79 years for men and 83 years for women), according to the latest data from Statistics Canada. In 1980, that number was just over 77 years.
Those numbers are lower for Canada’s Indigenous population, with the Inuit having the lowest projected life expectancy of 64 years for men and 73 years for women. Métis and First Nations populations have similar life expectancies, at 73-74 years for men and 78-80 years for women.
Drug-overdose deaths have skyrocketed in the U.S., jumping to 63,600 drug deaths in 2016, up from roughly 52,000 in 2015. An analysis from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that U.S. life expectancy fell from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.6 in 2016. The last time the U.S. life expectancy dropped was due to the AIDS epidemic in 1993.