More than 96,000 drug-induced deaths, over 95% of which stemmed from overdoses, were recorded in the United States in 2020.  That is approximately 29.2 such deaths per 100,000 population.  These results were worse than in 2019 when the U.S. recorded just over 74,500 drug-related deaths and had a drug-induced death rate of 22.7 per 100,000 population.  The sharp year-to-year jump in U.S. drug-induced deaths was a continuation of an unfavorable trend that goes back at least two decades.  In 2020 the four-state Southwestern U.S. recorded nearly 8,700 drug-induced deaths, giving the region a collective drug-induced death rate of 20.3 such deaths per 100,000 population.  While the region's drug-induced death rate was 30% below the national average in 2020, these results were skewed by particularly low drug death rates in Texas, the largest populated state in the region.  Two states in the region, Arizona and New Mexico, recorded drug-induced death rates in 2020 that were well above the national average.  A closer examination of data from the National Center for Health Statistics reveals the following details about drug-induced death rates in the Southwestern U.S.:

Drug-Induced Death Rates in the Southwestern U.S.

State	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
Arizona	2,675	7,421,401	36.0
New Mexico	836	2,106,319	39.7
Oklahoma	801	3,980,783	20.1
Texas	4,384	29,360,759	14.9
Region	8,696	42,869,262	20.3
U.S. Totals	96,096	329,484,123	29.2

(*) number of drug-induced deaths (intentional and unintentional) per 100,000 population

Report Period: 2020

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2020 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2021. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 1999-2020, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. Accessed on October 19, 2022