Fact Finders: Overdose deaths

You know, president obama recently signed the 21st century cures act... a bill that aims to fund cancer research and battle opioid addiction..

In this morning's fact finders... k-texas anchor george levesque looks at alarming new numbers that show opioid related deaths are way up... more and more americans are dying from drug overdose.

And that's mostly no thanks to prescription drugs.

In our factfinders..

We take a look at some new numbers just released from the centers for disease control and prevention.

They show a 23 percent increase in drug overdose deaths from 2010 to 2014.

How many deaths?

In 2014 alone there were 47 thousand.

But the c-d-c also released some numbers from 2015.

And they show that deaths from sythetic opoid medications are up 72 percent.

An opioid is a drug like heroin.

A synethetic opioid is a drug like codine or hydrocodone.

But another synthetic opioid is fast becoming a major killer.

Fentanyl deaths doubled in 2014 to 4 thousand 2 hundred.

Fentanyl is strong... similar to morphine but get this..

50 to 100 times more potent.

In fact... even though it's a relatively new drug it's already in the top five killers for overdose according to the c-d-c.

In fact 3 of the top 5 drugs are... heroin.... oxycodone and fentanyl.

Cocaine and xanax deaths also were in the top five.