STUMP » Articles » Mortality Quick Take: Drug Overdoses At Their Worst in 2022 » 8 July 2023, 06:34

I’ve been on vacation this week (did you notice?), and I thought CDC WONDER wouldn’t update until next week.

I was wrong.

Anyway, I have good enough data for 2022 now to update all my cause-of-death analyses for 2022. But more on that in a moment.

Drug Overdose Trend Continues Its Horrendous Path

One of my headline results is that (unintentional) drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2022 were at least at the level of 2021 — which is the worst ever.

Here is the graph, without any annotations:

Now, one might look at the 2022 result, in isolation, and say that it was merely at the same level as 2021…. which had been the worst experience ever.

That it merely stays at the same horrendous rate is better than it getting worse, sure. But there is nothing natural about the progression we have been seeing. There is no good reason that this has to be happening.

Let me add some annotations:

Do you understand the magnitude of the issue, now?

Coming Attractions

As noted at the beginning, I was waiting for this data update to make more accurate posts on 2022 mortality trends.

To come:

• Cause-of-death ranking tables (here are the 2021 tables, so you know)
• Updated analysis of change in mortality by age group and cause of death
• Deeper dive into key causes of death, especially the nasty ones:
  • Drug overdoses (this is just high level)
  • Suicide
  • Homicide
  • Motor vehicle accidents
  • Physiological causes with bad trends, such as kidney disease, diabetes, and Alzheimers disease
• These will be broken out by:
  • Age groups
  • Sex and race/ethnicity
  • Geography
  • Shown in the context of longer, pre-pandemic trends as well

So we have all that to look forward to.

In the meantime, you can find a compendium of key mortality posts here:

MORTALITY WITH MEEP 2023: Mortality Trends and Resources

Spreadsheet

Can be found at substack post