Ohio has one of the worst drug problems in the U.S.

SANDUSKY — Ohio was the second-worst state in the country with its drug overdose death rate in 2017, according to a new study issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Drug overdose deaths set a new national record last year and helped lower life expectancy.The U.S. had 70,237 drug overdose deaths last year, the most ever, the CDC said, and the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths was 9.6 percent higher than in 2016.West Virginia had the highest age-adjusted overdose death rate in 2017, about 58 per 100,000 people, the agency said. It was followed by Ohio (46), Pennsylvania (44), and the District of Columbia (44).Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl helped fuel the hike in deaths, the CDC said.In a separate report, the CDC said that life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2017, from 78.7 years in 2016 to 78.6 years last year.That continues a trend for the last few years, said CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield."Tragically, this troubling trend is largely driven by deaths from drug overdose and suicide," Redfield said. "Life expectancy gives us a snapshot of the nation's overall health and these sobering statistics are a wakeup call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable."Since 2011, drug overdoses in Ohio went up every year in which statistics are available, from about 1,770 in 2011 to about 4,850 in 2017. Statistics for 2018 won't be available until late 2019.Here are other statistics that illustrate how bad the drug overdose epidemic has become:• In 2005, more Ohioans died in traffic accidents than from drug overdoses. There were 1,328 traffic deaths, compared to 1,020 drug overdose deaths.By comparison, in 2017 there were more than four times as many drug overdose deaths as traffic deaths. There were about 1,100 traffic deaths but about 4,800 drug overdose deaths, according to numbers from the state health department and the highway patrol.• Ohio's 4,854 drug overdose deaths in 2017 was up from 4,050 in 2016, 3,050 in 2015 and 1,772 in 2011, the first year of the two-term Kasich administration.• The 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the U.S., according to the CDC, compares to 37,133 traffic deaths in 2017. Another source put drug overdose deaths in the U.S. at 72,306.• In the past 10 years for which data is available, 2008-2017, there were 474,104 drug overdose deaths in the U.S., according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.• In the same 10 year period, drug overdose deaths in Ohio totaled 24,801, according to figures from the state health department.• Drug overdoses in the U.S. are now killing more people every year than the worst year of the AIDS epidemic, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone. In 1995, the worst year of the epidemic in the U.S., 48,371 Americans died, according to factiv.org, compared to the more than more than 70,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017.A map from the Centers for Disease Control shows drug overdose rates in the 50 states. States in dark blue, such as Ohio, have the worst problem. Ohio is the second-worst state in the country.