US Opioid Deaths Fall to Lowest Level Since 2017, HHS Says

Opioid deaths in the United States have fallen to their lowest level since 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday, releasing an analysis that credits a decade of tighter prescribing, fentanyl enforcement and wider treatment.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the findings in Detroit. The analysis, from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, draws on provisional federal data showing the overall age adjusted death rate in the United States reached 689.2 deaths per 100,000 people in 2025, the lowest ever reported. Opioid related deaths fell to their lowest point since President Trump declared a public health emergency in 2017, the department said.

"President Trump has attacked the opioid crisis from every direction, rightsizing opioid prescribing, disrupting the fentanyl supply chain, and expanding treatment and recovery," Kennedy said. "Those actions are saving lives and driving opioid deaths to the lowest in nearly a decade."

The prescribing numbers show the scale of the change. Opioid prescriptions dispensed at pharmacies have fallen to 45.3 percent of their March 2015 level, measured across the period from March 2015 to March 2026, as doctors wrote fewer and shorter prescriptions and states tightened dispensing rules.

A steep fall, a disputed cause

The wider overdose data tell the same story of a sharp reversal. Writing in STAT this month, health policy researchers J. Travis Donahoe, David T. Zhu and Michael L. Barnett put the peak at 81,806 opioid overdose deaths in 2022, falling to 44,564 in 2025, a drop of almost half that helped push United States life expectancy to a record high in 2024.

Why it happened is contested. The administration points to border enforcement and fentanyl interdiction. Many public health experts point to naloxone, the overdose reversal drug, and to expanded access to medication treatment. Donahoe and his coauthors argue neither story fits the timing on its own: deaths began falling in mid 2023, before the current administration took office, and naloxone use recorded by emergency services has declined over the same period rather than rising enough to explain a drop of this size.

What is not in dispute is the direction. A death toll that rose for three decades has fallen for three straight years, and the federal government now measures the opioid death rate below the level that triggered a national emergency declaration nine years ago. Treatment providers say the test now is whether funding and access hold long enough for the fall to continue.