Data Snapshot: Drug-related deaths drop in 2022. First 3 quarters show decrease from record highs recorded in 2021.
The year 2021 was the worst year on record for drug-related deaths in the US. Would 2022 be even worse? No.
The latest data reveal that deaths caused by drug overdoses in the United States dropped in the first three quarters of 2022 compared to the first three quarters of 2021.
During the 2010’s drug-related deaths went up, as fentanyl use became common among people with substance use disorders. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, ongoing increases in drug deaths went up a bit in March and April of 2020, and then a lot more in May and after, as we “re-opened,” (which my colleagues and I showed a couple of years ago).
Things got worse in 2021, in particular in the South and in the West. But 2022 looks to have been a bit better, though still terrible by any historical standard.
Comparing the third quarter of 2022 to the peak in 2021, drug deaths have dropped by about 5% in the US overall. The Midwest and the South are down 8%, and the Northeast and West are down 5%. (The CDC data for the third quarter of 2022 are not quite complete yet, but this looks like some modest amount of progress. We don’t yet know what happened in the fourth quarter of 2022.)
That said, an increase in deaths due to psychostimulants (such as methamphetamine) are up more than 7-fold since 2015. (And overall, drug deaths are still way up from 2015.) Unlike for opioid overdoses—which can immediately reversed if naloxone (“Narcan”) is given in time—there is no similarly powerful, safe, and effective antidote for potentially fatal overdoses from psychostimulants. So, this is a problem we’re watching.
We also don’t know what the effects of public policy changes will be, and we have two opposing forces to keep in mind. On one hand, buprenorphine (the opioid replacement therapy shown to save lives and keep patients in recovery) is no longer any more difficult to prescribe than any other medication, thanks to the end of the “X Waiver” era. On the other hand, the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency (which will officially occur on May 11th) will reduce telehealth access for patients seeking help and wanting to initiate or stay in life-saving treatment. So, what will happen in 2023 is anyone’s guess.
Belated thank you Dr. Faust for the March-April 2020 peaks in all USA regions. And, above 10,000 deaths in the spring of 2020 in the South.
Morning Dr. Faust, That is a sad and interesting set of facts. I’m curious how the gun deaths and other causes of mortality compare regionally on an annual basis.