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“Life expectancy can reflect how healthy a country’s general population is, taking into account things like health care, lifestyle, obesity rates and rates of diseases. Currently, a person born in 2017 is expected to live to just over 82 years (79 years for men and 83 years for women), according to the latest data from Statistics Canada. In 1980, that number was just over 77 years.
Those numbers are lower for Canada’s Indigenous population, with the Inuit having the lowest projected life expectancy of 64 years for men and 73 years for women. Métis and First Nations populations have similar life expectancies, at 73-74 years for men and 78-80 years for women.
Drug-overdose deaths have skyrocketed in the U.S., jumping to 63,600 drug deaths in 2016, up from roughly 52,000 in 2015. An analysis from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that U.S. life expectancy fell from 78.9 in 2014 to 78.6 in 2016. The last time the U.S. life expectancy dropped was due to the AIDS epidemic in 1993.”
– Global News, Are opioid deaths reducing our average life expectancy? Canada now investigating.
“It was the first time the DEA had targeted a manufacturer of opioids for alleged violations of laws designed to prevent diversion of legal narcotics to the black market. And it would become the largest prescription-drug case the agency has pursued.
Ultimately, the DEA and federal prosecutors would contend that the company ignored its responsibility to report suspicious orders as 500 million of its pills ended up in Florida between 2008 and 2012 — 66 percent of all oxycodone sold in the state. Government investigators alleged in internal documents that the company’s lack of due diligence could have resulted in nearly 44,000 federal violations and exposed it to $2.3 billion in fines, according to confidential government records and emails obtained by The Washington Post.”
– Washington Post, The government’s struggle to hold opioid manufacturers accountable.
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Download the 18″x24″ poster (.pdf), Indian Country 52 29 – Opioids Life Expectancy.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
