Transparent Opioid‑Death Coding

Public health agencies should publish machine‑readable, versioned maps of the ICD‑10 code groupings and the exact algorithms they use to attribute overdose deaths to ‘prescription’ versus ‘illicit’ opioid categories, with change logs tied to date‑stamped mortality series. That would make year‑to‑year and jurisdictional comparisons reproducible, prevent headline confusion, and allow independent reanalysis. — Clear, auditable coding provenance would reduce policy confusion, improve media reporting on overdose trends, and focus interventions on the true drivers (e.g., illicit fentanyl) rather than misleading aggregates.