U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Reach Record High

Drug overdose deaths surpassed 100,000 in the United States between April 2020 and April 2021, a record high, per the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

The estimated 100,306 deaths during that window represented a 29 percent increase from the estimated 78,056 overdose deaths during the same period last year, according to the latest CDC data.

“It’s telling us that 2021 looks like it will be worse than 2020,” Robert Anderson, head of the mortality statistics branch at the NHCS, told the Wall Street Journal.