Seventy thousand overdose deaths in 2019, and a page that says it is out of date

Drug overdose is a leading cause of injury mortality in the United States.

**In 2019, drug overdose deaths totalled 70,630 — an increase of 4.8% on the
67,367 recorded in 2018.**

The disclaimer at the top

**The content on this page was last updated in June 2023. More recent
estimates and visualizations may be available from the NCHS Data Query
System.**

That notice is worth as much as the statistics beneath it.

Overdose mortality is one of the fastest-moving numbers in American public
health — it has changed direction more than once since 2019, and a figure from
that year describes a different epidemic from the current one. A static page
carrying an old number without saying so is how out-of-date statistics end up
quoted as current for years.

Saying, at the top, this is old, and here is where the live version lives
costs the page its authority and gains the reader an accurate answer.

Where the current numbers are

The NCHS Data Query System holds the up-to-date estimates and
visualisations, and is the right place to look for any figure more recent than
the ones above.

Anyone citing a US overdose death total should check the year attached to it
before using it — including the 70,630 on this page.

*Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.*