71,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year

Heroin laced with fentanyl.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

In 2019, close to 71,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, with 36,500 of those deaths due to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, according to preliminary numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday.

This is a new record, and comes after 2018 showed a slight decline in overdose deaths, The Associated Press reports. More than 30 states saw a jump in overdose deaths, with both methamphetamine and cocaine deaths rising.

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Brendan Saloner, an addiction researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told AP that in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont — states where drug users are being taught ways to prevent overdoses and treatment is more readily available — there was a decline in overdoses. Overall, he is still concerned that the coronavirus pandemic will make a bad situation worse, since people are "feeling a lot more despair, anxiety, and rootlessness, that leads to more problematic drug use and more risk of overdose."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.