Posted on June 4, 2021

Babies Born to White Mothers Are Almost Four Times More Likely to Be Killed by Drugs Than Those Born to Black and Hispanic Women

Mary Keatos, Daily Mail, June 3, 2021

White mothers in the U.S. are nearly four times more likely to have an infant death involving drugs, a new report published on Thursday finds.

Between 2015 and 2017, 442 babies had a death in which drugs – such as cocaine, methamphetamine, opioids, naloxone, and cannabis were involved – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Of those infant deaths, about 60 percent were the children of Caucasian women.

This figure is much higher than the roughly 20 percent of babies who were born each to black mothers and to Hispanic mothers.

Death rates from drug overdoses have exponentially risen among the U.S. population, tripling from 6.1 deaths per 100,000 in 1999 to 21.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2017.

Provisional CDC data for 2020 revealed more than 81,000 fatal overdoses occurred in the 12-month period ending in May 2020, a nearly 20 percent rise from the 12-month period ending in June 2019.

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Drug-involved deaths are defined as deaths that occur due to drug involvement as either the underlying or a contributing cause of death,’ the authors wrote.

Among infants, this could occur due to accidental or unintentional ingestion of selected prescription, illicit, or nonmedical-use drugs; maternal use of drugs; and other cases for which drugs were associated with the death.’

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The most common drug listed on death certificates was methamphetamine, which had 154 mentions.

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