US Drug Overdose Deaths Hit Record in 2020

More than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. last year, a record experts said was partly triggered by the isolation that many experienced during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

The government reported Wednesday that the 2020 total easily surpassed the previous record of about 72,000 deaths in 2019. “This is a staggering loss of human life,” Brandon Marshall, a Brown University public health researcher who tracks overdose trends, told The Associated Press. He said the United States was already faced with an overdose epidemic but that the pandemic “has greatly exacerbated the crisis.” Health experts said that while prescription painkillers once played a key role in U.S. drug overdose deaths, heroin and in recent years  fentanyl, a dangerously powerful opioid, proved exceptionally lethal.