US saw largest one-year decline in drug overdose deaths in 2024

The U.S. marked its largest one-year decline in drug overdose deaths in 2024, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Wednesday.

According to the CDC’s Percent Change in Predicted 12 Month-ending Count of Drug Overdose Deaths:

An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year — down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023. Experts mentioned several possible factors for the decline, including increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, expanded addiction treatment, shifts in how people use drugs and the impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money.

Still, annual overdose deaths are higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC said in a statement that overdoses are still the leading cause of death for people 18-44 years old. The numbers are provisional, meaning they’re estimates of everyone who died of overdoses in the U.S., including noncitizens. That data is still being processed, and the final numbers can sometimes differ a bit.

The CDC has been collecting comparable data for 45 years. The previous largest one-year drop was 4% in 2018, according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.

All but two states saw declines in 2024, with Nevada and South Dakota experiencing small increases. Some of the biggest drops were in Ohio, West Virginia and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation’s decades-long overdose epidemic.

This CDC page has a map that includes overdose deaths in each state. It shows the number of deaths that occurred in the 12-month period ending with December 2024 — in other words, all of last year — and the comparable period in 2023, and lists the percentage change.

Some state or local public health officials may have more localized versions of overdose death data.

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