Between 2010 and 2015, the annual rate of drug overdose deaths has increased from 12.3 per 100,000 population to 16.3. This is an increase of 33%. Per the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "In 2015, more than 52,000 Americans lost their lives from an overdose. More than 33,000 of these deaths involved a prescription or illicit opioid. ... Overdose deaths involving heroin have more than quadrupled since 2010. And what was a slow stream of illicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, is now a flood."