In 2022, 73,654 people died from a fentanyl overdose in the US, more than double the amount of deaths from three years prior in 2019. Fentanyl deaths have increased every year for the past decade, but 2022 marked the smallest year-over-year growth at 4.3%.
What is fentanyl and why is it so dangerous?
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Like other opioids, fentanyl use can lead to dependency and addiction. Most illicit fentanyl is made in labs outside the country and smuggled across the US-Mexico border.
Early in the opioid epidemic, overdose deaths were largely driven by a flood of prescriptions for drugs such as 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 to patients with severe or chronic pain.
As prescriptions for these drugs fell, heroin, and eventually illegally made fentanyl, became the main cause of opioid overdose deaths.
Drug dealers may mix fentanyl with other drugs such as heroin, cocaine, meth, and MDMA to increase the drugs’ effects — sometimes without the user’s knowledge.
Lethal dose of fentanyl
Because 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 using, it’s an especially dangerous combination. The DEA found that 6 out of 10 fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills contain a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.
When did fentanyl deaths begin to rise?
Fentanyl overdose deaths began to rise significantly in 2013, at the beginning of what the CDC calls the third wave of the opioid epidemic. That year, 3,105 people died from a synthetic opioid overdose. In 2022, fentanyl was responsible for 23 times more deaths.
In recent years, deaths from fentanyl overdose rose sharply, overtaking deaths from prescription opioids and heroin.
Why are fentanyl deaths rising?
The increase in fentanyl overdose deaths may be related to a decline in opioid prescription rates and reformulations to drugs such as Oxycontin aimed at curbing abuse, along with the growing rate at which illegally made fentanyl is combined with other illicit drugs.
From 2010 to 2020, the rate of opioid prescriptions dispensed per 100 people dropped from 81.32 to 43.3, a decline of nearly 47%. In West Virginia — the state with the highest rate of opioid prescriptions in 2010 — prescription rates fell by 62%. Despite the waning availability of prescription opioids, total overdose deaths involving any opioid more than tripled during the same period.
With deaths from prescription opioids and heroin falling, fentanyl overdoses have made up an increasingly large share of drug deaths. Since 2019, fentanyl has been involved in over half of all drug overdose deaths. By 2022, it was the underlying cause of nearly 70% of drug overdose deaths.
Source: USA Facts