Fake oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl are flooding America’s streets, but other street drugs including methamphetamine and cocaine are killing more and more people.
U.S. Attorney’s Office of Utah/Associated Press
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U.S. Attorney’s Office of Utah/Associated Press
Fake oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl are flooding America’s streets, but other street drugs including methamphetamine and cocaine are killing more and more people.
U.S. Attorney’s Office of Utah/Associated Press
The number of fatal drug overdoses in the United States fell by about 3% in 2023, preliminary data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.
That’s a significant reversal from previous years, when street fentanyl and other toxic synthetic drugs including methamphetamine triggered an unprecedented surge in drug deaths.
But the death toll from the overdose crisis in 2023 remained alarmingly high, claiming 107,543 lives.
By comparison, there were 111,029 drug overdose deaths in 2022.
Before the surge in fentanyl and methamphetamine use, there were far fewer overdose deaths in the United States, with about 53,356 deaths in 2015, for example.
Synthetic pills continue to flood the U.S.
In a statement released last week as part of the 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment, DEA Director Anne Milgram said the overdose crisis remains dangerous.
“The shift from plant-based drugs like heroin and cocaine to synthetic chemical drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine has led to the most dangerous and deadly drug crisis the United States has ever faced,” Milgram said.
Another report published on Monday International Journal of Drug Policy Fentanyl — often in the form of counterfeit prescription painkillers — continues to flood U.S. communities.
In 2023 alone, law enforcement seized more than 115 million counterfeit pills.
“The supply of illicit fentanyl continues to surge in the United States, and the influx of fentanyl-containing pills is particularly concerning,” said Joseph Palamar, associate professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Lead author of the study.
U.S. officials and drug policy experts say fentanyl is manufactured and smuggled primarily by Mexican drug cartels using chemicals supplied by Chinese cartels.
Opioid deaths down, but meth and cocaine claim more lives
The latest CDC data from 2023 shows that while fentanyl and other opioids remain the deadliest threat, other street drugs are becoming more dangerous.
The total number of fentanyl deaths actually dropped slightly in 2023, from 76,226 to 74,702. Meanwhile, the number of overdose deaths from psychostimulants (including methamphetamine) and cocaine increased from 63,991 to 66,169.
The CDC says that because many fatal drug overdoses involve multiple street drugs, the number of deaths caused by a specific substance does not “equal to the total number of drug overdose deaths.”
The study also found uneven progress in curbing fatal drug overdoses across the United States.
The CDC reports that drug deaths have dropped by 15% or more in Kansas, Indiana, Maine and Nebraska. Increases were also seen in other states, including Alaska, Oregon and Washington, which saw drug deaths increase by at least 27%.
Strategies aimed at curbing the overdose crisis have become a political flashpoint, hotly debated in Congress and in state capitals across the country.
Some states, including California and Oregon, have begun rolling back drug policies that were designed to shift addiction responses to a public health model and reduce the role of police.
But there is also little sign that tighter drug laws, increased border security and increased drug seizures have had a significant impact on the increasingly toxic supply of street drugs.
In its latest report, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration found that “no field offices [in the U.S.] Reports suggest that fentanyl is available less frequently or has increased in price, both of which indicate a decrease in supply.
NPR’s Emma Bowman and Martin Castor contributed reporting.
