Summary: Several factors played a significant role in the dramatic reduction in opioid overdose deaths in 2024, including expanding access to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), expanding access to suboxone and suboxone treatment, expanding access to the overdose reversing drug Narcan, and easing restrictions on prescribing MOUDs via telehealth.
Key Points:
- All drug overdose deaths decreased by close to 31% in 2024
- Opioid overdose deaths decreased by 40% in 2024
- Reports show the largest decrease in overdose fatalities since 1999, dwarfing the small decrease observed in 2018
- Reports show the first decrease in opioid overdose fatalities since 1999
2024: The First Real Change in the Overdose Crisis in 25 Years
The overdose crisis in the United States has been ongoing since 1999. It dominated public health headlines between 2013 and 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic arrived and commanded all our attention. The facts on the overdose crisis are staggering: over a million people lost their lives to overdose in the two and a half decades.
Experts agree that between 2000 and 2019, the overdose crisis unfolded in three stages, with the fourth stage beginning around 2019.
Here’s a quick timeline:
- First phase: Beginning in the late 1990s, a rapid increase in opioid prescriptions driven by new, more powerful opioid medications created by pharmaceutical companies led to an increase in opioid misuse and opioid use disorder (OUD) nationwide.
- Second phase: Beginning around 2007, prescribing policies changed, but many people had already developed OUD associated with prescription opioids. Without access to legal opioids, many turned to illicit opioids, including heroin, which increased overdose rates nationwide
- Third phase: Beginning around 2013, presence of the opioid medication fentanyl – 100 times more powerful than morphine, 50 times more powerful than heroin – appeared in the illicit drug supply in the U.S., causing another rapid increase in overdose fatalities.
- Fourth phase: Beginning around 2019, increases of the presence of fentanyl in opioids and illicit drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine, combined with an increase in polydrug use and co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders during the pandemic, triggered another increase in overdose fatalities through 2023.
Now, in 2025, promising new data hints at something addiction treatment providers have been working toward for twenty years:
We may be at the beginning of the end of the opioid crisis. We won’t declare victory yet, with questions around ongoing funding for crucial initiatives currently hanging in the balance, but this is the first real progress we’ve seen since the crisis began.
In the rest of this article, we’ll share detailed overdose data from a new report published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and check that against data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) on rates of MOUD use, in order to learn about the role suboxone treatment may have had in the decrease in overdose fatalities in 2024.
Facts and Figures: Overdose Rates, Medication for Opioid Use Disorder Rates, 2019-2024
Data published by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows the following fata overdose figures for all drugs, including stimulants, opioids, alcohol and others, as well fatal overdose figures for all opioids, including illicit opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, and prescription medications such as oxycontin and others.
Overdose Fatalities 2019-2024
2019:
- All: 70,630
- Opioids: 49,860
2020:
- All: 91,799
- Opioids: 68,630
2021:
- All: 107,573
- Opioids: 80,411
2022:
- All: 109,413
- Opioids: 82,851
2023:
- All: 110,037
- Opioids: 80,719
2024:
- All: 80,391
- Opioids: 54,101
After an increase of 44 percent for all drugs and 47 percent increase for opioids between 2019 and 2023, rates fell by 30 percent for all drugs and 40 percent for opioids in 2024.
We cannot overemphasize what a big deal this is. We’re cautiously optimistic we’ve turned a corner we’ve been trying to turn for 20 years.
Now let’s look at the trends in rates of medication use for opioid use disorder, as reported by the 2019-2023 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (2019-2023 NSDUH).
Received Medication for Opioid Misuse/Opioid Use Disorder (OUD): 2019-2023
2019:
- Number: 664,000
- Rate per 100: 0.3
2020:
- Number: 795,000
- Rate per 100: 0.3
2021:
- Number: 1.0 million
- Rate per 100: 0.4
2022:
- Number: 2.3 million
- Rate per 100: 0.9
2022: Among people with OUD:
- Number: 1.1 million
- Rate per 100: 18.8
2023:
- Number: 3 million
- Rate per 100: 0.9
2023: Among people with OUD:
- Number: 1.0 million
- Rate per 100: 18.8
Those figures show us a 110% increase by number between 2019 and 2023 and a 100 percent increase in rate per 100 over the same time period. It’s also important to recognize that between 2019 and 2023, prescriptions for the overdose-reversing drug Narcan increased by 82 percent, from just under a million in 2019 to over 2 million in 2023.
We’ll discuss these facts and figures below.
Medication for Opioid Use Disorder: Suboxone Treatment
Details from the CDC report indicate decreases in overdose fatalities in all 50 states, with the exception of small increases in South Dakota and Nevada, with Louisiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin and Washington, D.C showing decreases of over 35 percent.
What role did Suboxone play in this potentially historic shift?
We must infer the effect from the data above on the increased rates of MOUDs between 2022 and 2023., since the NSDUH doesn’t report data for each of the three medications for opioid use disorder, which are:
- Buprenorphine, the active ingredient in Suboxone
- Methadone, a synthetic opioid
- Naltrexone, a medication that blocks the action of opioids in the human body
Of those three medications, buprenorphine, i.e. Suboxone and Suboxone variations such as Sublocade – is considered the safest, and is therefore the most commonly prescribed of the three available types of MOUD. In the absence of complete data reporting on buprenorphine prescriptions – currently we have private insurance data, but not data from Medicaid, the largest reimbursing body for buprenorphine in the U.S. – we can review the data above and arrive at the reasonable conclusion that increased rates of MOUD use, of which buprenorphine (Suboxone) accounts for the largest percentage, played a role in the dramatic drop in overdose fatalities in 2024.
If you or someone you love needs support for opioid use disorder (OUD), please call us today: we’re ready to offer our support with a variety of approaches, including Suboxone treatment in our Suboxone Clinic and Sublocade Clinic. both located in San Diego.
Angus Whyte has an extensive background in neuroscience, behavioral health, adolescent development, and mindfulness, including lab work in behavioral neurobiology and a decade of writing articles on mental health and mental health treatment. In addition, Angus brings twenty years of experience as a yoga teacher and experiential educator to his work for Crownview. He’s an expert at synthesizing complex concepts into accessible content that helps patients, providers, and families understand the nuances of mental health treatment, with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes and quality of life for all stakeholders.