Illicit drug overdoses and the deaths they cause are trending down this year, despite spikes in a handful of states, according to a Stateline analysis of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A handful of places with rising overdoses are responding to the problem with cooperation, they say, by sharing information about overdose surges and distributing emergency medication.
“The national conversation is just about warships in the Caribbean and drones and borders,” said Nabarun Dasgupta, who studies overdose trends at the University of North Carolina. “It discounts this huge groundswell of Americans taking care of Americans. There’s a huge amount of caregiving and tending to the needs of local communities that is being done in a non-flashy way because this is hard, slow work.”
Overdose deaths have been dropping steadily since 2023. As of April, the latest date available, deaths were at 76,500 for the previous 12 months — their lowest level since March 2020. A pandemic spike in overdose deaths drove the number as high as almost 113,000 in the summer of 2023, according to federal statistics.
President Donald Trump has ordered more than a dozen military strikes against boats in the open waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean since Sept. 2, claiming without publicized evidence that their occupants were drug runners bringing narcotics to the United States. Nearly 60 people have been killed.
The bulk of deadly fentanyl is smuggled over the border with Mexico in passenger cars, according to a September report by the federal Government Accountability Office. Chemicals and equipment, mostly from China, are smuggled in via cargo trucks, commercial ships, airplanes and the mail, according to the report.
A more timely indicator of overdoses — nonfatal suspected overdose patients in hospital emergency departments — was down 7% this year through August compared with 2024, according to Stateline’s analysis of CDC statistics.
The nonfatal overdoses were up for the year in only a few states and the District of Columbia. The largest spikes were 17% in the district, 16% in Rhode Island, 15% in Delaware, 11% in Connecticut and 10% in New Mexico, with smaller increases in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, New Jersey and Minnesota.
Other states saw drops in nonfatal overdoses: Maryland had the largest decrease through August, about 17%.
But Baltimore had an attention-grabbing cluster of 42 overdoses between July and October, all within the same neighborhood. No fatalities were reported. The cluster led the city to set aside$2 million in October for more mobile services, harm reduction and social supports to fight overdoses.