THANK GOD –
Jan. 14, 2026 – U.S. overdose deaths fell through most of last year, suggesting a lasting improvement in an epidemic that had been worsening for decades.
Federal data released Wednesday showed that overdose deaths have been falling for more than two years — the longest drop in decades — but also that the decline was slowing. And the monthly death toll is still not back to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, let alone where it was before the current overdose epidemic struck decades ago, said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends. Overdose deaths began steadily climbing in the 1990s with overdoses involving opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths from heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. Deaths peaked nearly 110,000 in 2022, fell a little in 2023 and then plummeted 27% in 2024, to around 80,000. That was the largest one-year decline ever recorded.
