In May 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that drug overdose deaths had fallen 27%, from roughly 110,000 in 2023 to about 80,000 in 2024. Provisional data through late 2025 projects a further drop to around 72,000. [KFF Health News] 

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As an addiction researcher at Stanford, and someone in long-term recovery, I felt the relief of that news personally. I also watched as my colleagues exhaled for the first time in years.

After two decades of relentless escalation, the overdose curve had finally bent downward. Policymakers are celebrating and calling it “unprecedented progress.” The CDC is framing it as saving “more than 81 lives every day.”

They are both right. More than 81 lives a day — that is real, and it matters. But it should give us reason to pause.

Here’s what we’re celebrating: a death toll that exceeds total American combat fatalities in Vietnam, every single year. In 2015, when overdose deaths first topped 50,000, the shameful milestone was treated as a national wake-up call. A decade later, 50,000 deaths is now an aspirational target. That shift in expectations is a warning sign: The crisis isn’t getting better — we’re just getting more used to it.

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