Nearly 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, according to final figures released Thursday.
The official number was 106,699, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That's nearly 16% higher than the nearly 92,000 overdose deaths in 2020.
Meanwhile, life expectancy in the United States dropped for the second consecutive year in 2021, falling to the lowest it has been since 1996, according to final mortality data published Thursday by the CDC. Life expectancy fell to about 76 years, 5 months.
Earlier, provisional data suggested there were more than 107,000 overdose deaths last year. The numbers may have changed as some additional death records have come in, a CDC spokesman said. Also, provisional data includes all overdose deaths, while the final numbers are limited to U.S. residents, he noted.
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The CDC on Thursday released a final report for overall U.S. deaths in 2021. As previously reported, more than 3.4 million Americans died that year, or more than 80,000 than the year before. Accidental injuries — which include drug overdoses — was the fourth leading cause of death, after heart disease, cancer and COVID-19.
COVID-19 was a major contributor to the decline in life expectancy, which is now nearly two and a half years shorter than it was at the start of the pandemic. After a drop of 1.8 years in 2020, another cut of 0.6 years last year brought U.S. life expectancy down to 76 years, 5 months in 2021.
"What we're seeing in terms of the patterns of mortality, it's being driven, I think, largely by the pandemic," said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics. The drop isn't necessarily surprising, but it is "substantial."
The final mortality data are less severe than earlier estimates predicted; provisional data suggested life expectancy might have dropped nearly a full year in 2021. But it is still historic: Life expectancy typically only changes by 0.1 or 0.2 years.
Nearly 1 in 8 deaths in 2021 were due to COVID-19, up from about 1 in 10 deaths in 2020. It was again the third leading cause of death. Heart disease remained the leading cause of death, followed by cancer. About half of all deaths last year were from these three causes.
The final CDC mortality data show that between 2020 and 2021, overall death rates increased for all age groups except infants younger than one year. But the largest increase was among those ages 35 to 44, a group that was most affected by drug overdose deaths.
"These data are very tragic but not surprising," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "The pandemic had a magnifying effect on an already-devastating overdose crisis and exacerbated many of the stressors in society that make people more vulnerable to taking drugs."
Deaths involving synthetic opioids such as fentanyl increased by a marked 22% in 2021, according to the CDC data. Deaths involving cocaine and psychostimulants such as methamphetamine were also significantly more frequent while those involving heroin decreased.
