I went to the CDC site that was vaguely pointed to in the article you referenced and was unable to find the study sort of cited. Sad that there is no data more current than preliminary 2011 data. The existing CDC data does not back up your reference. Sorry.
Exactly my point. Americans are being distracted, duped, lied to, and conned.
A focus on addiction, the country’s leading cause of accidental death
Over on Wonkblog, there’s a lengthy discussion between Stanford addiction expert Keith Humphreys, PhD, and Harold Pollack, PhD, on drug overdoses, the recent death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and ways to prevent others from dying. The entire piece is worth a read, but a few parts jumped out at me:
HP: Many people don’t realize that overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S. I gave a talk about five years ago in Chicago, and I mentioned that we had more overdose deaths than traffic fatalities. My audience literally did not believe me. People were absolutely convinced that I had mis-transcribed the numbers. Every year, America loses a little over 32,000 people in auto crashes, and something like 38,000 from overdose deaths annually.
- See more at: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2014/02/10/a-focus-on-addiction-the-countrys-leading-cause-of-accidental-death/#sthash.T7fFEwH5.dpuf