Report: Annual Drug Overdose Deaths Reach All-Time High

Powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl have combined with fallout from the pandemic to drive a steep rise in deaths.

Signs are displayed at a tent during a health event on June 26, 2021, in Charleston, W.Va.John Raby/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A record 107,600 people died of drug overdoses in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today, another tragic indication that powerful synthetic drugs and the Covid-19 pandemic helped fuel a rapid increase in deaths. The estimated total is likely to change as the CDC continues to review death records, but nevertheless, the startling increase constitutes evidence that the opioid crisis has only continued to grow in size and scale. 

Since the 1970s, annual drug overdose deaths have trended upward every year except for 2018, when totals briefly dipped before reaching all-time highs during the pandemic. 2021 represented a 15 percent increase over 2020, which had in turn surpassed 2019’s total by 30 percent. The state with the highest increase in overdoses was Alaska, where deaths rose by a staggering 75.3 percent

Seventy-one thousand of the overdose deaths recorded last year involved fentanyl, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid. Fentanyl is often used to lace other drugs, like cocaine, which can have fatal consequences for users unaware of what they’re actually consuming. Thirty-three thousand deaths involved the stimulant methamphetamine, representing an 8,000 death increase from 2020. Many overdoses, however, involved the use of multiple drugs. 

The Biden administration recently released a national strategy that embraces “harm reduction” tactics to decrease the number of overdoses. Instead of punishing drug users, harm reduction aims to connect them to social services and treatment. It also stresses programs that help expand access to clean syringes and the drug naloxone, also known as narcan, which can reverse overdoses. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate