The high percentage of treatment admissions for marijuana and stimulants reflects the prevalence of these substances in California’s drug landscape. Native American/Alaskan populations show particularly high rates of methamphetamine use, while prescription pain medication misuse is highest among those of Other/Multiple Races. «• These laws what is Oxford House are effective at reducing overdose mortality without creating additional opioid use. Correspondingly, these measures should be considered an important part of the strategy used to address the opioid epidemic.» «The potential benefits of nalmefene over naloxone (greater opioid receptor affinity, longer duration action) carry the risk of causing harm. These benefits, if present, should be demonstrated in the clinical environment, balanced with the risks, and compared to naloxone prior to the broad adoption of nalmefene.» Narcan, made by the company Emergent BioSolutions, is given as a nasal spray and naloxone — the active ingredient in the medication — can quickly restore one’s breathing if an individual is experiencing an opioid overdose, though its effect is temporary and some people may need additional doses.

Alcohol Abuse Statistics

However, younger adults (18-25) show the highest rates of binge drinking and alcohol use disorder, suggesting more problematic drinking patterns in this demographic. While Maryland teens use substances slightly below national averages, marijuana dominates youth drug use, and prescription pain reliever misuse remains concerning. Methamphetamine poses a significant and growing threat in Texas, as evidenced by high death rates, treatment admissions, and lab identifications. The significant increase in alcohol-attributable deaths, particularly from acute causes, suggests a worsening trend in alcohol-related harm.

South Dakota Alcohol Abuse Statistics

Among jurisdictions where 2024 crude rates remain above their 2019 values, the state with the largest imbalance remains Mississippi, where in 2024 the crude rate was still 70% larger compared to its 2019 level. Mississippi is followed by South Dakota and Iowa for which crude rates are 54% and 30%, respectively, larger compared to their 2019 values. Interestingly, in New Mexico, the state with the largest crude rate in all years since 2010, crude rates in 2024 (33.8 fatalities per 100,000) returned to values similar to the ones recorded in 2019 (34.8 fatalities per 100,000). To better understand how alcohol-related mortality patterns evolved during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, we now compare the 2019 crude rates in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia to their 2021 and 2024 counterparts. These comparisons help us identify the geographic areas in which crude rates rose the most and the least in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, compared to 2019, just before the pandemic.

Alcohol-Related Deaths and Health Impacts

The addictive and destructive nature of opioids, many other drugs, and alcohol puts pressure on the social and economic fabric of families and communities, resulting in downward spirals that lead to further addiction. The combination of that assumption with the methodology change resulted in a dramatically higher cost estimate than previous research had shows. «• For each year, rates of alcohol-induced deaths for males aged 25 and over were higher than for females.» «• For females aged 25 and over, rates increased 76% from 2000 through 2018, from 4.9 to 8.6.

Among both males and females, alcohol-attributable death rates increased for most cause of death categories. The average number of sex-specific alcohol-attributable deaths increased among all age groups from 2016–2017 to 2020–2021(Figure). While most mortality trends began decreasing or stabilizing in 2023, only in 2024 did significant decreases emerge, and only for some demographic groups. Crude rates for 2024 remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels especially among females with ALD. Furthermore, they are above their 2019 values by at least 30% in South Dakota, Mississippi and Maine among males, and in Mississippi, Wyoming and Rhode Island among females, where they exceeded their 2019 values by more than 60%. County-wise the highest crude rates were recorded in 2021, and occurred in areas with large AIAN populations in South Dakota and New Mexico.

Drug Abuse Treatment & Prevention

Unlike drug poisonings, which are often acute and due to overdose, most alcohol-induced deaths are chronic and are the result of many years of steady alcohol consumption. With the exception of fatal injuries caused by alcohol intoxication, drugs (particularly opioids) kill people more quickly than does alcohol. This complicates the ability to draw a clear link between cohort-based trends in the availability and consumption of alcohol among younger adults and subsequent period changes in mortality among older adults. Relative to drug poisoning, the extended period of consumption before the onset of many diseases caused by alcohol provides greater opportunity for intervention before alcohol-induced mortality occurs, as well as greater opportunity for deaths from other causes. In contrast, drug poisoning mortality may be more likely to track contemporaneous trends in the supply of particularly lethal drugs.

Alcohol Use Disorder and Treatment in Texas

• Public and private insurers paid for prescriptions for many years without developing adequate checks to determine whether the prescriptions were appropriate.
• However, current and proposed federal budget cuts, public health workforce reductions, and proposed federal agency reorganizations are likely to undermine this progress, according to a new report.
• In 2021, at the height of the pandemic, crude rates increased in all states compared to 2019; they were greatest in Alaska (32.7 fatalities per 100,000), New Mexico (32.4 fatalities per 100,000), and South Dakota (30.4 fatalities per 100,000).
• Alcohol-induced death rates in 2023 were highest among AI/AN people (61.5 deaths per 100,000 people), adults ages 55 to 74 (32.5 deaths per 100,000 people), adults ages 35 to 54 (20.2 deaths per 100,000 people), and males (18.1 deaths per 100,000 people).
• Deaths due to chronic diseases related to alcohol use or for which alcohol is a contributing factor but not the primary cause of death, such as injuries, certain cancers, or cardiovascular events, were not included in our analyses, potentially underestimating the overall death burden.

Going forward, it’s unclear how the Trump administration’s deep cuts to public health agencies and grants will affect this new addiction safety net. We include deaths that are directly attributable to the use of illicit drugs (e.g., heroin), prescription medicines (whether prescribed or obtained illicitly), and over-the-counter medications. While these substances cause significant harm, they fall outside the scope of Drug Trends program, which primarily focuses on illicit drugs.

• Although these trends were seen among all racial/ethnic groups, their exact timing and pattern varied by sex, age, and race and ethnicity, suggesting that not all working-age adults were equally impacted by each phase.
• Psychological distress and health behaviors were among the most important correlates of these trends.
• Yet, only one-third of adults view alcohol addiction as a crisis, compared to over half who see opioids as such.
• Research on temporal trends in ACE prevalence is sparse, so it is also difficult to determine whether the changes observed in working-age drug- and alcohol-related mortality can be attributed to a posited increase in ACE prevalence.

«• From 2020 to 2021, life expectancy at birth decreased by 0.7 year for males (from 74.2 to 73.5) and by 0.6 year for females (79.9 to 79.3). Drugs “with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependance” are classified as Schedule III. Mental illness and substance abuse (comorbidity) is relatively common among military veterans. In 2023, 20.4 million or 7.9% of all adults aged 18 and older in the US had both AMI and at least one SUD in the past year. As most hallucinogens have no accepted medical use for treatment in the US, they are illegal. Among Americans alcohol overdose aged 12 years and older, 47.7 million were current illegal drug users (used within the last 30 days) as of 2023.

Learn About Marijuana Risks & Understanding Alabama’s Medical Marijuana Law

Among males in this cohort, crude rates rose from 2.3 fatalities per 100,000 in 1999 to 8.9 fatalities per 100,000 in 2021 (a 291% increase from 1999), before decreasing to 6.5 fatalities per 100,000 in 2024 (a 188% increase from 1999). Among females, crude rates rose from 0.9 fatalities per 100,000 in 1999 to 4.4 fatalities per 100,000 in 2021 (a 381% increase from 1999) and have slightly decreased to 3.2 fatalities per 100,000 in 2024 (a 255% increase from 1999). The significant increase in alcohol-related death rates indicates a worsening public health crisis, with particularly concerning trends among specific racial and ethnic groups.