Today, August 21, marks #NationalFentanylPreventionandAwarenessDay. For a long time, we’ve used the term #opioidepidemic. But it’s important to talk about fentanyl specifically, given its primary role in causing damage.
- More than 107,000 people in the U.S. died from drug overdoses in 2023, according to early data from the CDC.
- Deaths involving synthetic #opioids, mainly #fentanyl, accounted for 74,702 of overall overdose deaths.
- Fentanyl was responsible for a third of deaths among Americans 25 to 34 in 2022, according to a New York Times analysis of C.D.C. mortality data.
- In 2023 alone, fentanyl killed more Americans than the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined (those three wars killed a little over 65,000 Americans combined).
- Most of the fentanyl supply in the U.S. comes from Mexico, where it’s mass-produced using precursor chemicals believed to come largely from China.