Every day, more than 115 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids. The misuse of and subsequent addiction to opioids—including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids like fentanyl—is a grave national crisis that affects public health as well as social and economic welfare. The CDC estimates that the total economic burden of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.
I chose to write about the opioid crisis because of the nature of this project. I was interested in the searches related to opioids. Even more so, I was interested in the searches made by those addicted to opioids. In this new digital age, the instinct to turn towards the vast internet rather than a trained doctor has increased. People aren’t always the smartest- when we feel ill we look up our symptoms in a desperate attempt to self-diagnose.
I utilized Google Trends to compare the frequency of searches related to opioids or drug addictions. Join me in an adventure into the terrifying, and very real issue that is the opioid crisis.
Opiod Overdose Crisis
Drug Related Searches Across the U.S.
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