World Opioid and Substance Use Epidemic: A Latin American Perspective.

The opioid crisis is a growing social and public health phenomenon, particularly in developed countries such as the United States. Since the 1990s, this crisis has shown a variety of causal processes and consequences and has affected quality of life for millions of individuals, families, and communities across the globe. Although abuse of opioid-based painkillers appears to have triggered the epidemic in the United States, in this article, the problem is examined with a focus on Latin America, where drug-associated problems constitute threats to the health and quality of life for large segments of the population.