Dynamics of drug overdose in the 20th and 21st centuries: The exponential curve was not inevitable, and continued increases are preventable

We focus on contextualizing public health, policy, and prevention implications of the trends in overdose, underscoring that the increases in drug poisoning deaths in the US have had both common and distinct causes at each stage and by each specific drug that thereby require policy responses that are both general across substances and unique to some. Moreover, our view is that the variation across period, space, and cohorts illustrates that each stage of the unfurling opioid and other drug overdose epidemic was, and continues to be, preventable.