Drug Overdose Deaths Plummeted in 2024, C.D.C. Reports

New York Times

15-05-2025

Overdose deaths in the United States fell by nearly 30,000 last year, the government reported on Wednesday, the strongest sign yet that the country is making progress against one of its deadliest, most intractable public health crises.
The data, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the latest in a series of reports over the past year offering hints that the drug-related death toll that has gutted families and communities could be starting to ease.
Public health experts had been carefully watching the monthly updates, with skepticism at first, and then with growing hope. Wednesday's report was the most encouraging yet. Deaths declined in all major categories of drug use, stimulants as well as opioids, dropping in every state but two. Nationwide, drug fatalities plunged nearly 27 percent.
'This is a decline that we've been waiting more than a decade for,' said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, a physician and former director of West Virginia's drug control policy. 'We've invested hundreds of billions of dollars into addiction.'
Addiction specialists said that changes in the illicit drug supply as well as greater access to drug treatment and the use of naloxone to reverse overdoses seemed to be paying off, but whether the country could sustain that progress was an open question.
In announcing the new numbers, the C.D.C. praised President Trump, saying in a statement that since he 'declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2017' the government had added more resources to battle the drug problem.
But the new data was released as Mr. Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was testifying on Capitol Hill about the administration's proposed cuts to many federal health programs, including those addressing the drug crisis.
'I don't see how it can be sustained, with the kinds of deep cuts that they're taking to many of the programs that have been driving these reductions,' said Traci C. Green, an epidemiologist at Brandeis University who researches drug use.
'It seems ridiculous to cut that momentum so dramatically,' she said.
And despite the progress, drug fatalities remain high. According to the data, 80,391 people died from drug-related causes in 2024. That was the lowest tally since 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic isolated drug users and shut down treatment facilities, sending overdose fatalities skyrocketing. But Dr. Green called the latest figures 'extremely high and unacceptable.'
The C.D.C.'s statement said the improved numbers showed that public health interventions were 'making a difference and having a meaningful impact.' Still, it noted that overdose remained the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 44.
While a constellation of factors could be accelerating the drop, experts do not know which have had the most impact. Dr. Christiansen said that addiction was a particularly elusive crisis to combat because it had tentacles in a patient's economic, familial, cultural, social and medical background. An array of interventions includes not only emergency responses and treatment, he said, but a continuum of care that wraps in housing and job training.
'Now funding is being rescinded, and we still don't know what the appropriate level of intervention is for each particular community, town, region and state,' he said. 'People and programs are going to fall through the cracks.'
According to the preliminary budget circulated among federal agencies, the C.D.C.'s opioid surveillance programs may be cut by $30 million and folded into a new subdivision, the Administration for Healthy America. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency that coordinates and monitors grants for support programs, and provides training and data analysis, is facing a cut of over a billion dollars, and will also be folded into the new subdivision.
According to the agency's most recent survey about substance use, in 2023, 27.2 million Americans ages 12 or older had a drug use disorder, 28.9 million had alcohol use disorder and 7.5 million had both.
At Wednesday's hearing, before the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Madeleine Dean, Democrat of Pennsylvania, whose son is in recovery from opioid addiction, took Mr. Kennedy to task, noting his own history of heroin addiction. She said that in light of the improving fatality rates, she could not understand the rationale for the administration's cuts.
Addressing Mr. Kennedy, she said: 'You know these families. You are these families. Help us save more lives.'