United States: There were 30,000 fewer deaths caused by drug overdose in the United States in 2024 compared to the year before, which was the biggest one-year decline ever.
About 80,000 people died of overdoses last year, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data released Wednesday. That’s down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023.
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CDC has been gathering on-the-same-level data for 45 years. The biggest one-year fall was 4% in 2018, according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The only exceptions were Nevada and South Dakota, where they rose slightly, while for the rest, they dropped last year, US News reported.
Some of the hardest hit states were Ohio, West Virginia, and others that are among the worst affected in the long-running overdose epidemic in the country.
Experts’ opinions reveal that research is required to understand the factors responsible for the decrease. However, experts provide a list of potential causes.
Among the most cited: Increasing the distribution of the antidote for overdose – naloxone.
📉New data shows drug overdose deaths in the US were down 27% in 2024 from the year before.
— Megan Fee (@meganfeetv) May 14, 2025
That's the largest decline in recorded history. @WKRN pic.twitter.com/74lcfEQwx6
Nevertheless, the death rate through overdoses has increased compared to the rate before the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a drug policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco, “Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal,” US News reported.
Some experts fear the decrease, which has been going on lately, may be halted due to the cuts in federal financing or public health staff or the abandonment of the strategies that appear to be effective.
The provisional numbers are the estimates of everyone in the US who succumbed due to overdoses, and they include noncitizens.
That data is yet to be processed, and the final figures may change a little.
However, one can say that there was a massive decline in the previous year.
Experts say the precedent has been that in the past, there were times when the US overdose deaths appeared to be plateauing or even dropping, and then they would come back up again. That happened in 2018.