More Drug-Related Deaths Than Ever

The newly released World Drug Report 2017 published by the UNODC on June 22, reveals a dramatic increase in death rates related to drug abuse in England and Wales. According to the Office for National Statistics in the UK, the number of drug-related deaths has more than tripled from 12 in 1995 to 38 in 2015, therewith marking a hitherto unseen peak of drug-induced deaths within the last 20 years.

This is mainly due to an increased mortality rate for users of heroin or morphine across all ages: Revealing the highest numbers of deaths among the selected substances and being further responsible for a sharp increase since 2011, heroin and morphine abusers are dominating the statistics. As the infographic reveals though, a surging death toll was also registered for users of other most commonly used drugs as indicated below.