Are Fentanyl Overdose Deaths Increasing in the U.S.?

In 2022, 73,654 people died from fentanyl overdose in the U.S., more than double the number of deaths three years earlier, in 2019. Fentanyl deaths have increased every year over the last decade, but 2022 recorded the lowest annual growth at 4.3%.What is fentanyl and why is it so dangerous?
The fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Like other opioids, fentanyl use can lead to dependence and addiction. Most illicit fentanyl is produced in labs outside the country and smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border.
At the beginning of the opioid epidemic, overdose deaths were largely driven by a surge in prescriptions for drugs like Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, Oxymorphone, and Morphine. Pharmaceutical fentanyl was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a pain reliever in 1998 and was typically prescribed for patients with severe or chronic pain.
As prescriptions for these drugs fell, heroin, and eventually illegally produced fentanyl, became the leading cause of opioid overdose deaths.
Drug traffickers may mix fentanyl with other drugs like heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and MDMA to enhance the effects of the drugs—sometimes without the user’s knowledge.Deadly dose of fentanyl
Since fentanyl is significantly stronger than other opioids, doses as small as two milligrams can be lethal. And with users unaware of how much fentanyl they are consuming, this is an especially dangerous combination. The DEA found that 6 in 10 counterfeit prescription pills containing fentanyl have a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.When did fentanyl deaths start to rise?
Fentanyl overdose deaths began to rise significantly in 2013, at the start of what the CDC calls the third wave of the opioid epidemic. That year, 3,105 people died from synthetic opioid overdose. By 2022, fentanyl was responsible for 23 times more deaths.
In recent years, fentanyl overdose deaths have surged, surpassing deaths from prescribed opioids and heroin.Why are fentanyl deaths increasing?
The rise in fentanyl overdose deaths may be related to the decline in opioid prescription rates and reformulations of drugs like Oxycontin aimed at curbing abuse, along with the increasing rate at which illegally produced fentanyl is mixed with other illicit drugs.
From 2010 to 2020, the rate of opioid prescriptions dispensed per 100 people fell from 81.32 to 43.3, a decrease of nearly 47%. In West Virginia—the state with the highest opioid prescription rate in 2010—prescription rates fell by 62%. Despite the declining availability of prescribed opioids, the total number of overdose deaths involving any opioid more than tripled during the same period.
With deaths from prescribed opioids and heroin declining, fentanyl overdoses have come to represent an increasingly larger share of drug deaths. Since 2019, fentanyl has been involved in more than half of all drug overdose deaths. In 2022, it was the underlying cause of nearly 70% of drug overdose deaths.Source: USA Facts