Overdose deaths involving methamphetamine have increased sharply in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where a sevenfold rise in death rates between 2015 and 2019 was the highest in the country, a recent analysis from the Pew Charitable Trust found. The deaths come as more people are using a drug most commonly known as meth, a stimulant which produces an energizing high by increasing activity in the central nervous system. Hundreds of thousands more adults nationwide reported using meth in 2019 than in 2015, a rise of about 22%, the Pew report found. It’s still less popular than opioids like prescri…
