In 2021, 70,601 people died from a fentanyl overdose in the US. That figure is up 25% from 2020 and is nearly double the amount of fentanyl overdose deaths in 2019.
Initially, opioid deaths were largely driven by a flood of legal prescriptions for drugs such as Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, Oxymorphone, and Morphine. But in recent years, as prescriptions fell, illicit fentanyl became the main cause of overdose deaths.
The fentanyl epidemic has reached every state, but the effects are not felt equally across the US. When adjusted for population, West Virginia and Washington, DC had the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths.
