Hey Christie: Here Are 4 Worse Killers Than Drugs In New Jersey

Drug overdoses and narcotic-related deaths are tragic, statewide health crises that New Jersey residents must address with passion and immediacy. But are they the worst public safety crisis facing the state? Not by a longshot, according to New Jersey Department of Health statistics.

During the annual State of the State address on Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie passionately spoke about how drug addiction is an epidemic that is “ravaging” New Jersey and its people.

Nearly 1,600 New Jersey residents died from drug overdoses in 2015, an increase of about 20 percent over 2014, according to data from the state medical examiner’s office. Most of those came from opioids, including heroin and fentanyl, the New York Times reported.

According to Christie, that total is three times the number of people that died in car accidents and four times as many as were murdered.

“This is perhaps the single most important issue to every New Jersey family we will have the chance to address while I am governor,” Christie insisted.

But despite Christie’s insistence that the state’s drug problem is “more urgent than any other epidemic,” if you live in the Garden State, heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic respiratory disease are are much more likely to kill you, according to state statistics.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, New Jersey and most of New Jersey's counties, according to the New Jersey Department of Health.

“However, due to relatively low heart disease death rates, cancer is the leading cause of death in Burlington, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Salem and Somerset counties,” the DOH states. “It is the second leading cause of death in all other New Jersey counties, as well as in the U.S. and New Jersey as a whole.”

Together, heart disease and cancer account for nearly half of all deaths in New Jersey each year, the DOH states.

The CDC states that 506 New Jersey residents died from firearm deaths and 419 from homicides in 2013, totals that even if combined, don’t crack the top 10 statewide.

According to the New Jersey State Health Assessment Data website, here are the 10 leading causes of death in the Garden State for 2014.

• Heart Disease - 18,023 deaths (25.6%)
• Cancer - 16,393 deaths (23.3%)
• Stroke - 3,363 deaths (4.8%)
• Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases - 3,018 deaths (4.3%)
• Unintentional Injury (includes drugs, alcohol and car crashes) - 2,882 deaths (4.1%)
• Diabetes - 2,050 deaths (2.9%)
• Alzheimer's Disease - 1,936 deaths (2.8%)
• Septicemia - 1,747 deaths (2.5%)
• Kidney Disease - 1,486 deaths (2.1%)
• Influenza and Pneumonia - 1,219 deaths (1.7%)

Following Christie's speech, the "recovery-oriented” drug policy reform group Help Not Handcuffs said that the governor’s claims about the drug epidemic are grossly lacking context.

“The governor claimed the drug epidemic is ‘more urgent than any other epidemic’ due to 1,600 overdose deaths in 2015 in New Jersey,” the nonprofit stated. “While tragic, this fact is grossly out of context, as in 2009 more than 1,900 people died in New Jersey from diabetes alone… This misleading visceral is necessary for the continuation of failed Drug War tactics such as drug criminalization and forced treatment.”

The nonprofit also asserts that Christie’s “misleading” statistics ignore the fact that the Office of the State Medical Examiner counts overdoses in multiple categories when more than one drug is present in the deceased.

“Drug treatment is something we can all rally around,” Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson) said. “But there are still many challenges facing the State of New Jersey going forward.”

Photo: Flickr Commons

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