This Is the State Where Drug Overdoses Rose the Most

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 14, 12:45PM EDT

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This Is the State Where Drug Overdoses Rose the Most — © Thinkstock

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just released the annual “Provisional Number of Drug Overdose Deaths” for the period from December 2019 to December 2020. Overdoes rose an extraordinary 29.4% to a record of 93,331. The deaths are considered provisional because drug overdoses often are originally categorized as “no cause of death.” It can take weeks to get toxicology and other pertinent information.

As the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released the numbers, its experts commented: “Overdose deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) and psychostimulants such as methamphetamine also increased in 2020 compared to 2019. Cocaine deaths also increased in 2020, as did deaths from natural and semi-synthetic opioids (such as prescription pain medication).”

The increase varied considerably by state. New Hampshire’s figure actually fell 0.5% to 393. The figure for South Dakota fell 15.9% to 74. In every other state, the percentage rose.

The state with the highest increase is New Hampshire’s neighbor Vermont. It posted a percentage increase of 57.6% to 186. Many other states with large increases were in the south. In South Carolina, the figure rose 51.9% to 1,730. In Tennessee, the number was up 44% to 3,128. In Kentucky, the number rose 53.7% to 2,104. And in Louisiana, the number was up 47.6% to 1,925.
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Although no final conclusion has been given about the increase, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, remarked, “These data are chilling. The COVID-19 pandemic created a devastating collision of health crises in America.”

Click here to see the most preventable selfie deaths around the world.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.