New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest opioid overdose deaths have dropped to their lowest level in three years.
The CDC estimates there were just over 75,000 opioid overdose deaths for the year that ended in April.
That's a 10% drop from the peak of estimated opioid deaths during the summer of 2023, when the CDC estimated more than 86,000 opioid deaths in the period between August 2022 and August 2023.
However, the current pace is still much higher than before the pandemic, when there were fewer than 50,000 fatal opioid overdoses a year. Opioids are a class of drug that include heroin and fentanyl.
Fatal overdoses from other drugs, such as cocaine and methamphetamine, also appear to be trending downward.
Former president Donald Trump has made "ending the scourge of drug addiction" a crucial part of his campaign, saying on his campaign website, "We will not rest until we have ended the drug addiction crisis. For three decades before my election, drug overdose deaths increased every single year. Under my leadership, we took the drug and fentanyl crisis head on, and we achieved the first reduction in overdose deaths in more than 30 years."
On the site, the former president outlines steps he would take to address the crisis, including calling on other countries to help dismantle smuggling rings and giving drug dealers and human traffickers the death penalty.
Trump has blamed the Biden-Harris administration's "reckless open-border policy" for letting drugs like fentanyl "pour into our country."
Kate McManus ✉
Kate McManus is a New Jersey-based Newsmax writer who's spent more than two decades as a journalist.
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