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the number of estimated US drug deaths rounds up at two significant figures to 69,000

In 2021 there were 107,000 drug overdose deaths in the united states https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

In 2020 it was 92,000. Your number of 69,000 is only a thousandish off of 2018's total of 70,630, so maybe it was an early estimate from then?

That's a 55% increase over your figure, and also a 52% increase in drug overdose deaths in only 5 years.

Edit: ah, maybe you were looking at just the fentanyl deaths, which by themselves were about 69,000 in 2020. They were up to 80,000 the next year.

I do indeed appear to have mis-read the context and caveat. Thank you for the correction.

It's hard to keep track when figures are changing that fast. 69k passes any pre-2020 sanity check.

Thanks for promoting me to look it up: I'd had no idea heroin deaths were actually down and crack is coming back, since we only hear about opioids now.