In this recent CDC report, the black line is total drug overdose deaths. The big inflection point upward is during the lockdown months of April and May 2020. May’s deaths were around 12% higher than March’s deaths, which is huge.
The brown line that contributes most of the recent rise is our old friend “synthetic opioids,” such as fentanyl.
The gray line also going up recently, although not as much, is “psychostimulants with abuse potential:” e.g., meth.
The red line is cocaine. It went up early in 2020, even before Covid, but flattened out in the summer of 2020.
