Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. last year plunged to their lowest annual level since 2019 or before the pandemic.

That's according to CDC data published yesterday. Our John Yang joins us now with more.

Jeff, the numbers show that in 2024 nationwide overdose deaths fell by nearly 30,000 from the year before.

That's a drop of about 27%.

There were declines across all major categories of drug use, including opioids, the source of

most overdose deaths in the past decade. Brian Mann reports on issues related to addiction for NPR.

Brian, how big a deal is this?

This is the most dramatic thing we've seen, really, since the opioid crisis began in the 1990s.

A 27% drop in deaths.

It's unprecedented.

The researchers I talk to say it's so vast that there's a real mystery here about why it's

improving so quickly.

It's also continuing.

We've now seen about 16 months in a row where these dramatic improvements have continued.

And so after years of a really apocalyptic situation with fentanyl and other street drugs,

we finally have some truly good news here.

What are the factors that brought this about? What do people credit for this?

You know, again, it's one of the things that's fascinating as a reporter covering this is that

there is uncertainty there. There is a mystery at the heart of this. But people point in part

to the huge public health response that expanded under the Biden administration. We really

started to see the numbers coming down as early in some places as 2021.

Also, street fentanyl appears to be getting weaker in many areas, which is a phenomenon that people

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