As if COVID didn’t take enough lives in 2020, we are learning that drug overdoses also led to more deaths than ever before last year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 93,331 people died from drug overdoses in 2020, which is up from 70,980 the year before. This marks the largest annual increase in more than half a century. About three-quarters of those deaths is due to opioids.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The surge, the 2020 data show, was driven largely by a proliferation of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid whose use has spread across the nation. The pandemic amplified the epidemic of overdoses, bringing on social isolation, trauma and job losses, according to addiction experts and treatment providers. Overdose deaths began rising in the fall of 2019 with the spread of fentanyl, but really took off starting in March 2020, when pandemic-driven shutdowns and physical-distancing measures set in. “It’s really one of those things where 2020 turbocharged something that was already wildly out of control,” Dr. Saloner said.

Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University and an expert on addiction and drug policy told the Washington Post, “It’s terrifying. It’s the biggest increase in overdose deaths in the history of the United States, it’s the worst overdose crisis in the history of the United States, and we’re not making progress. It’s really overwhelming.”