Provisional figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show a ‘remarkable nearly 27 per cent decrease’ in predicted drug overdose deaths last year compared to 2023, the agency has announced.
An estimated 80,391 people died as a result of drug overdoses in 2024, down from 110,037 the previous year – the steepest one-year decline ever recorded. While overdose fatalities have been steadily falling each month since the end of 2023 overdose remains the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-44, CDC points out, ‘underscoring the need for ongoing efforts to maintain this progress’.
The provisional figures cover all deaths including foreign residents, and so are likely to be up to 500 higher than the official annual data, CDC points out. Several states recorded decreases of 35 per cent or more with only two, South Dakota and Nevada, showing an increase. Deaths involving opioids fell to 54,743 from more than 83,000 the previous year, while deaths involving methamphetamine and cocaine were also down.
However, more than a million people in the US died a drug-related death in the first two decades of this century, with the country’s opioid crisis officially declared a public health emergency in 2017. A recent report in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that almost 19m children in the US were estimated to be living with at least one parent or primary caregiver with a substance-use disorder, while an earlier report in JAMA Psychiatry showed that an estimated 321,566 US children lost a parent to drug overdose in the decade to 2021.
Provisional drug overdose death counts here
See the June issue of DDN for an interview with Jim Duffy, executive director of Boston-based harm reduction organisation Smoke Works