America's Addictions May be the Downfall of a Once Proud Nation

The Centers for Disease Control is offering up a pretty bleak peek at the new normal in the good ol' USA: an appalling 72,000 Drug Overdose Deaths in 2017 alone.

We'll do the ugly math for you. That's creeping awfully close to 200 drug-deaths every day.

Drug overdoses are stone cold killers, stealing the last breaths of a jaw-dropping 6,000 citizens each month - a record number of dead people that equals just about a 10% rise from the year before.

According to a study entitled New Estimates in The Drug Epidemic, the annual drug OD death toll is higher than the largest yearly totals from gun deaths, car crashes or HIV.

Analysts say the findings are primarily the result of two major reasons: More Americans than ever are seduced into using opioids, and the drugs themselves have become far more powerful and far more addictive.

Here's another look: