| Hello and happy solstice, readers! This is Sy. Let’s keep things short and to the point on the shortest day of the year. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released a new report on U.S. life expectancy and, bluntly, what’s killing Americans. The agency’s sobering assessment? Life expectancy in America has fallen for the second straight year. And there’s a likely culprit that bears a disproportionate share of the blame this time around: Drug overdoses, especially those tied to the opioid crisis. The 2015 life expectancy drop was the first time American longevity dipped since 1993; the 2016 shortfall is modest but significant, projecting an average 78.6 years of life. That’s a 0.1% decline, which may not sound like much, but is enough to have public health officials worried. (Women still have a significantly higher life expectancy than men at 81.1 years, versus 76.1 years for men.) In fact, there were more than 63,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016, including more than 40,000 from opioid overdoses. The most concerning trend may be among “synthetic” opioids like fentanyl since deaths among this opioid class doubled between 2015 and 2016. If the trend continues, America could well see the third straight year of life expectancy decline next year—the first time such an event would occur in about a century. Read on for the day’s news. | 
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