Erratum

[Erratum]

In David Herzberg's article, "Entitled to Addiction?: Pharmaceuticals, Race, and America's First Drug War," vol. 91, no. 3 (Fall 2017), pp. 586-623, an error occurs on p. 610. The error appears in the sentence that reads, "fatal barbiturate overdoses alone rose nearly fivefold between 1933 and 1953 (the per-capita rate rose fourfold), reaching a high of nearly eight people per hundred thousand population—a higher mark than prescription opioid deaths in 2014 during the twenty-first-century epidemic."

Due to a calculation error, the per capita fatal barbiturate overdose rate in 1953 is incorrect. It was 0.7 per hundred thousand population, not nearly 8 per hundred thousand population. By 1965, the rate for barbiturates alone (not including "minor tranquilizers") had reached 1.8 per hundred thousand. Prescription opioid related overdoses were approximately 4.9 per hundred thousand in 2014.