One American died of a drug overdose roughly every five minutes in 2021. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the provisional total at more than 107,000, a record and a 15 percent jump over the old high from 2020. The agency announced the estimate on a Wednesday in May 2022, and the figure still reads as an indictment.
The CDC arrives at its count by reviewing death certificates and then estimating to cover delayed and incomplete reporting. Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the numbers “truly staggering.”
Fentanyl at the center
The technical reality is that one drug class did most of the damage. Overdoses involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids passed 71,000, up 23 percent from a year earlier. Deaths involving cocaine rose 23 percent as well, and those involving meth and other stimulants rose 34 percent.
A single death can involve several substances. Officials said cheap fentanyl was turning up more and more inside other drugs, frequently unknown to the person buying them. Volkow described the effect: many more people, “including those who use drugs occasionally and even adolescents,” were exposed to potent substances that can cause an overdose “even with a relatively small exposure.”
Two decades of climb
Deaths from overdose had climbed in the majority of years since the 1990s. The increase began in the 1990s with opioid painkillers, then came waves led by other opioids such as heroin and, most recently, illicit fentanyl. Experts also said the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse, because lockdowns and other restrictions isolated people with addictions and made treatment harder to get.
The trend was uneven across the country. Alaska recorded a 75 percent increase in 2021, the largest jump of any state. Hawaii went the other way, with deaths down 2 percent.
The White House called the accelerating pace “unacceptable” and pointed to its newly announced national drug control strategy, which includes getting more people into treatment, disrupting trafficking networks and widening access to naloxone, the drug that reverses overdoses.
Sources
- CDC says more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, setting 'staggering' record (AP via PBS News)
- 2021 U.S. overdose deaths hit record 107,000, CDC says (AP via WHYY)
