There were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024 than the year before — the largest one-year decline ever recorded.
An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. That’s down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023.
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.
I’m surprised there wasn’t a bigger drop during Covid.
After spending 2 1/2 years locked in my apartment, I’m shocked that I didn’t overdose. What are you even talking about?
Not sure if this is a joke, but I’m sorry if you’re legitimately struggling with this.
I was figuring job loss leading to less income, plus stay at home orders leading to less ability to meet/congregate with people supplying/using, plus change in supply lines possibly leading to difficulties acquiring or at least a rise in prices. That plus a decrease in possible other stressors, time for introspection, and time to get and stay clean without concern for other priorities seemed to make it a good time to try to quit. I’m not really involved in that so I don’t know though. Just speculation. I know people who quit smoking and drinking, but that’s obviously very different. That was mostly because they didn’t smoke/drink alone so they were able to go a bit without and decided to keep it that way.
I suspect you’re very young and inexperienced in life. The evidence is your comment.
Life can be very hard for some people sometimes. Don’t judge how those people deal with the shit they have to live with.
Just be glad you’re not them.
I’m neither, but ok.
My comment acknowledged that life can be hard, but admittedly assumed that a lot of stressors are outside the home. Plenty of stressors inside the home as well of course, but I was just mentioning what my first thoughts were. I passed absolutely no judgement in my comment, to my knowledge. Please feel free to let me know what part came off as judgmental. That was not my intention.
I’m not saying my life is difficult, but just because someone is not involved in drug use doesn’t mean that they’ve had it easy.
Yeah, OK…
This is not about you. Wow.
You’re the one that brought up my age and what you perceived to be my life experience and then suggested I not judge people. I’m not making it about me. I’m making my position clear, since apparently it was not understood. I don’t want there to be any confusion. Best of luck.
Time for you to grow up
I wonder if this is just a matter of people not getting into the drugs at all because of lacking social connections. So not transitioning into addicts and overdose or something about narcan availability.