Nearly 70,000 Americans died of a drug overdose in 2025. While that is a decline from the nearly 108,000 deaths recorded in 2022, these grim figures distinguish the U.S. from other high-income countries. At the peak of the opioid crisis, the U.S. overdose death rate was 68% higher than Canada’s and nearly five times that of Australia.
And death is only the starkest indicator: Substance use disorder imposes hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare, criminal justice and lost productivity costs each year – to say nothing of the incalculable disruption to families and communities.
