In October, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found overdose deaths decreased by 10% between April 2023 and April 2024, the first time since the 1990s that overdose deaths had declined at all.
That trend seems to be continuing downward, with drug deaths declining for a consecutive 12 month period ending in June 2024 by an even greater 17%, according to new CDC data released this week. Overdose deaths take a while to be measured, but the agency’s predictive model suggests that once these numbers are finalized across states, the number of people to die from an overdose across this 12-month period will be approximately 96,000.
