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The Conversation USA

Dispatches from the morgue: Toxicology tests don't tell the whole story of the opioid epidemic

  • Written by Justin Wade Hubbard, Doctoral Candidate, Medical History, Vanderbilt University
Mortality data show only the final result of opioid overdose, not why it happens.Skyward Kick Productions/Shutterstock.com, CC BY-NC-SA

“Drug overdoses killed more Tennesseans than ever last year, fentanyl deaths up 70 percent,” a recent headline from my hometown newspaper, The Tennessean, proclaimed.

Variations of this headline have...

Read more: Dispatches from the morgue: Toxicology tests don't tell the whole story of the opioid epidemic

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