evidence: Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied more than 180 million ER visits from Dec. 30, 2018, to Oct. 10, 2020, and found that weekly counts of all drug overdoses were up to 45% higher in 2020 than in 2019, according to the study published Feb. 3 in the peer-reviewed JAMA Psychiatry. Opioid overdoses, specifically, increased about 29% compared with before the pandemic. [...] The study comes a few months after the CDC reported an increase in drug overdose deaths that may have been accelerated by the pandemic – more than 81,000 deaths in a 12-month period ending in May 2020, an 18.2% increase from the year before. The agency said synthetic opioids are the primary driver of overdose deaths, increasing more than 38% compared with the 12 months ending in June 2019. "I’m not surprised to see data like this come out," said Dr. Patrick Marshalek, an addictions specialist and associate professor at West Virginia University’s School of Medicine. The pandemic "is breeding this and making it more likely to happen with a wide variety of substances."