• Posted May 14, 2026

U.S. Overdose Deaths Fell to Pre-Pandemic Levels in 2025

The number of Americans dying from drug overdoses has dropped for the third year in a row.

Nearly 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, according to a report released May 13 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s down 14% from 2024. 

The new total mirrors that of 2019, before the COVID pandemic. The third straight year-to-year decline is the longest in decades, according to The Associated Press.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that this represents really a fundamental change in the arc of the overdose crisis,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends.

Declines were seen across a number of drug types including heroin; opioids like fentanyl; and psychostimulants like methamphetamine. They could also include a combination of multiple drugs. 

For instance, a death that involved both heroin and fentanyl would account for two categories: the number of drug overdose deaths involving heroin, and the number of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, CDC explained.

Several possible factors could explain the decline in overdose deaths since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to The AP. These include:

• Wider availability of the drug naloxone, an over-the-counter treatment that can reverse opioid overdoses (approved in March 2023)

• Better access to addiction treatment, including looser U.S. methadone regulations (effective October 2024)

• Shifts in drug use habits 

• The growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money

Despite the declines, the number of Americans dying of drug overdose is still high. Marshall and other researchers cautioned that the number could rise again due to government policy changes or a shift in the drug supply.

“If deaths are going down rapidly, that means they can increase just as rapidly if we take our foot off the gas,” Marshall told The AP.

In addition, new substances are showing up in the U.S. drug supply. 

“The drug supply continues to change and evolve,” said Alex Krotulski, director of the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education, a federally funded toxicology lab in Horsham, Pennsylvania. The lab identified 27 new drugs last year and 23 so far this year, according to Krotulski.

Further, the Trump administration is cutting programs designed to reduce overdose deaths and infections tied to drug use. This includes shifting away from services that facilitate illicit drug use, such as clean syringes, and hotlines that people can dial into while they use drugs, officials say.

Kimberly Douglas, who founded the group Black Moms Against Overdose after the death of her 17-year-old son, said drug overdoses are going down yet the federal support for the harm-reduction services responsible for the decline is shrinking.

“We are starting to see overdoses go down in some places and that’s because of harm reduction” services like those being targeted by the Trump administration, she said.

SOURCE: AP News, May 13, 2026