Since 2002, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses have quadrupled, largely fueled by the highly lethal fentanyl, new data shows. Fentanyl has increasingly contaminated the illegal supply of cocaine in the United States because the drugs are made and stored together, experts say, USA Today reports. In 2022 alone, nearly 108,000 Americans died from a drug overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because drug-overdose deaths are part of the CDC category "unintentional injury," that became the nation's third-leading cause of death for 2022, behind heart disease and cancer, which have consistently been the leading cause of death in the U.S. since the early-to-mid 1990s.
In 2022, 107,941 people died of drug overdoses, or 32.6 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the CDC. The total number of deaths is a slight increase from 2021 (106,699 deaths). Rates of overdose are more than twice as high for men, at 45.6 per 100,000 in 2022 versus19.4 for women. A study from 2023 found that men are dying at higher rates not just from opioids but from methamphetamine and cocaine.