(NEXSTAR) – After years of alarming increases, fatal drug overdoses have finally dropped in America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced.
The agency reported there were 30,000 fewer deaths from drug overdoses in 2024 than there were the year prior. It’s the largest one-year decline ever recorded – about 27% – but nonetheless, around 80,000 people lost their lives to an overdose.
The biggest drops were in some of the states hardest hit by the opioid overdose epidemic, including West Virginia, which saw a 44% single-year decline.
Virginia, D.C., Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Michigan, Ohio, and Louisiana all saw drops of more than 35%.
Two states, Nevada and South Dakota, were outliers. Those states actually recorded an increase in fatal overdoses in 2024.
South Dakota’s overall numbers are still quite small, however. The state recorded 88 overdose deaths last year. States with much larger populations, like California, Florida and Texas, reported between about 5,000 and 10,000.
The CDC notes this data is provisional and incomplete. In many cases, the cause of death could still be under investigation, and so the final death toll could differ.
Experts say more research needs to be done to understand what drove the reduction, but they mention several possible factors. Among the most cited:
- Increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.
- Expanded addiction treatment.
- Shifts in how people use drugs.
- The growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money.
- The number of at-risk Americans is shrinking, after waves of deaths in older adults and a shift in teens and younger adults away from the drugs that cause most deaths.
Still, annual overdose deaths are higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, the CDC noted that overdoses are still the leading cause of death for people 18-44 years old, “underscoring the need for ongoing efforts to maintain this progress.”
Some experts worry that the recent decline could be slowed or stopped by reductions in federal funding and the public health workforce, or a shift away from the strategies that seem to be working.
“Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal,” said Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a drug policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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