The CDC National Center for Health Statistics provisional release of May 13 holds at 69,973 U.S. drug overdose deaths for 2025, down 13.9 percent from 81,313 in 2024 — the third consecutive year of decline and the steepest single-year drop the federal series has recorded in roughly a generation. [1] Opioid-involved deaths fell from 55,296 to 44,564 over the same twelve months. Five states (Rhode Island, New York, North Carolina, Alabama, Vermont) recorded declines of 25 percent or more; three (New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado) rose 10 percent or more. The Memorial Day holiday weekend did not move the counter, which is consistent with the federal release cadence — NCHS provisional updates are scheduled, not daily.

Sunday's open correction retired the paper's earlier 68,632 figure inherited from a Hill intermediate read. Monday's number is the same 69,973. The shape of the year is unchanged — third consecutive decline, opioid sub-set falling faster than the headline, three state increases against a national fall — and the counter the paper carries into the next edition is the NCHS number, not any intermediate read. [2]

The plain-English Memorial Day Monday version: fewer Americans died from overdoses in 2025 than in any year since 2019, and the decline is large enough that the academic literature has stopped calling it a wobble and started calling it structural. The next variables that could reverse it are policy levers, not chemistry — Medicaid cuts, SAMHSA grant terminations, and the "Weapon of Mass Destruction" fentanyl designation are the ones KFF's December tracker named. The naloxone over the counter at the corner pharmacy remains the household answer the federal figure does not yet count. [3]

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago