stylistic:style_transfer, quality:correction
United States

In 2020, 14.5% of Americans aged 12 or older had a SUD in the past year. Rates of alcohol use disorder in the past year were just over 5%. Approximately 3% of people aged 12 or older had an illicit drug use disorder. The highest rates of illicit drug use disorder were among those aged 18 to 25 years old, at roughly 7%.

There were over 72,000 deaths from drug overdose in the United States in 2017, which is a threefold increase from 2002. However the CDC calculates alcohol overdose deaths separately; thus, this 72,000 number does not include the 2,366 alcohol overdose deaths in 2017. Overdose fatalities from synthetic opioids, which typically involve fentanyl, have risen sharply in the past several years to contribute to nearly 30,000 deaths per year. Death rates from synthetic opioids like fentanyl have increased 22-fold in the period from 2002 to 2017. Heroin and other natural and semi-synthetic opioids combined to contribute to roughly 31,000 overdose fatalities. Cocaine contributed to roughly 15,000 overdose deaths, while methamphetamine and benzodiazepines each contributed to roughly 11,000 deaths. Of note, the mortality from each individual drug listed above cannot be summed because many of these deaths involved combinations of drugs, such as overdosing on a combination of cocaine and an opioid.

Deaths from alcohol consumption account for the loss of over 88,000 lives per year. Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death, responsible for greater than 480,000 deaths in the United States each year. These harms are significant financially with total costs of more than $420 billion annually and more than $120 billion in healthcare.