Smoking drugs, not injection, now most common way to overdose in U.S.: report

Overdose deaths in the U.S. are now more likely to follow smoking drugs rather than injecting them, the CDC reports. Drug smoking is also a leading factor in Canadian overdoses.

Fatal drug overdoses from smoking substances, rather than injection, has increased dramatically in the United States, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found.

Injection-related overdoses were previously the most commonly documented route for drug deaths in the country. However, a report published Thursday found that the rate decreased by 29.1 per cent between 2020 and 2022, falling from 22.7 per cent to 16.1 per cent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of overdose deaths with evidence of smoking increased by 73.7 per cent during the same timeframe, rising from 13.3 per cent to 23.1 per cent.

Researchers gathered information about routes of overdose deaths from witness reports, scene investigations and autopsy data, which was then categorized as either injection, smoking, snorting or ingesting.

The report compared data on routes of drug-related deaths from January to June 2020 with data from July to December 2022.

In a two-year span, smoking had become the most common route of drug overdose in the U.S.

According to the report, more than 109,000 people died from drug overdose in the U.S. in 2022. Nearly 70 per cent of those deaths involved illegally manufactured fentanyls.

Growing reports of substance-related harms in Canada point to a similar crisis.