According to the latest provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. drug overdose deaths have come down from the peaks of the past years while remaining at high levels.
Recent figures suggest a notable decline to around 70,000 annual fatalities in 2025, following a peak of nearly 110,000 in 2023.
Still, synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, continue to be the main driver of overdose mortality, involved in more than half of the U.S. cases and underscoring the scale and persistence of the crisis.
As Statista's Katharina Buchholz shows in the chart below, the role of synthetic opioids has grown dramatically over the past decade...
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In early 2015, fentanyl and related substances were involved in just 12 percent of all drug overdose deaths. This share rose steadily in the following years, surpassing 50 percent by early 2020 and reaching around two-thirds of overdose deaths by 2021-2022, as the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the situation.
At its peak in 2023, synth
