Drug overdose deaths drop in United States for third year in a row

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released data showing that deaths from drug overdoses fell by nearly 14 percent in 2025, continuing a third consecutive year of decline.

The data released on Wednesday shows that the US saw nearly 70,000 predicted overdose deaths in 2025, down from more than 81,000 in 2024.

The downward trend has been welcomed in the US, which has struggled with a devastating overdose crisis fuelled largely by synthetic opioids.

Overdose deaths peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 110,000 recorded in 2022, a surge associated with social isolation and obstacles to accessing treatment services.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that this represents really a fundamental change in the arc of the overdose crisis,” Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends, told The Associated Press news service.

Experts have attributed the decline to various factors, such as wider availability of the overdose treatment naloxone, commonly sold under the brand Narcan.

Testing strips that can detect fentanyl are also more common now, and regulatory changes in China have limited access to the chemicals used to manufacture the drug.

While overdose deaths declined in most US states in 2025, seven states saw increases. In Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, overdose deaths increased by 10 percent or more.

The administration of President Donald Trump, however, has pointed to the decrease overall as validation of its crackdown on drug trafficking. In a statement earlier this month, the White House said that drug overdoses continue to be one of the country’s “most urgent public health challenges”.

That theme was reprised on Wednesday by Kash Patel, Trump’s appointee as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In a social media post, Patel asserted that his agency has seized enough fentanyl to kill more than 200 million Americans in 2025 and 2026. That sum amounts to more than half of the country’s population.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi previously stated that, during Trump’s first 100 days in office, the government had saved the lives of 119 million people through drug seizures. Bondi later increased the estimate up to as many as 258 million lives. Experts have widely panned such claims as overblown.