Paul Goble
Staunton, July 8 – Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistics agency, says that the number of deaths from drug overdoses in the country jumped by 37 percent between 2020 and 2021 and exceeded 10,000 in the latter year, continuing a radically increasing rise in recent years.
In 2019, the agency registered 4569 deaths from this cause, and in 2020, that figure had risen to 7316 (rbc.ru/society/09/07/2022/62c82a4e9a7947459362d0d5 and snob.ru/news/v-rossii-smertnost-ot-narkotikov-za-2021-god-prevysila-10-tysyach-sluchaev-eto-na-37-procentov-bolshe-chem-godom-ranee/).
As a result, drug overdoses now account for seven percent of all deaths from the category of those caused by what Rosstat calls external circumstances, such as accidents, murders, suicides and the like. Russian experts say the increase reflects the influx of both traditional drugs and new designer drugs, and some reflects an increase in reporting after the pandemic.
Rosstat also reported a slight decline in the number of deaths connected with alcohol. It fell by six percent between 2020 and 2021, from 50,435 to 47,393. The latter figure is nearly identical to the one recorded in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. Then some 47,427 Russians died from alcohol abuse.
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