Portions of the Midwest, Northeast, and Southern United States Have the Highest Rates of Death by Overdose

Data from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics shows that in the U.S., the rate of people per capita who die as a result of a drug overdose has increased significantly over the past decade. Five states have had consistently high rates throughout this time period.

Although West Virginia, Kentucky, Delaware, Ohio and Pennsylvania don’t have the highest number of deaths, they have had some of the highest rates of overdose deaths per capita. After 2019, many states saw an increase in both the number of overdose deaths, and the rate of deaths per 100,000 residents.

David Herzberg, Ph.D, professor of history in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, attributes this rise to two factors: the COVID-19 pandemic, and what he refers to as the further poisoning of the drug supply.

“I don’t track this data religiously, but my sense of the broad stages of the overdose crisis were from prescription pharmaceuticals to heroin, from heroin to fentanyl, and then to fentanyl with xylazine, and then fentanyl began to show up in all of the drugs that were sold in prohibition markets,” he said.