Many people wonder if cannabis can cause fatal overdoses like alcohol, opioids, or tobacco. The truth is, cannabis has a unique safety profile that sets it apart from other substances. There is a wide range of overdose death rates among the states; the highest concentration is located in the Northeast, straddling the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions. The fastest growing drug category among OD deaths is synthetic opioids, and many opioid deaths involve other drugs. Effective treatment options for substance use disorders exist, but treatment coverage remains incredibly low.
For these reasons, although the overall trends in mortality from these causes of death differ, it is possible that these trends are the result of common underlying vulnerabilities to drug and alcohol use within certain population groups and geographic areas. In a subsequent study, Ho (2017) conducted a thorough analysis of changes in U.S. death rates due to drug poisoning between 1992 and 2011, stratified by educational attainment. Drug poisoning death rates increased among White adults (both males and females) at all levels of education, even during the earliest period of 1992–1996, before the emergence of OxyContin. The increases were, however, especially steep in the 2000s compared with the 1990s among those ages 30–60 compared with older adults, among White adults compared with the population as a whole, and among those with a high school education or less compared with those with a college degree or more. Thus, Ho (2017) concluded that the increased death rate from drug poisoning from the early 1990s to the 2010s was especially steep among the less educated and accounted for large shares (~70% for men and ~44% for women) of increasing educational disparities in working-age mortality over this period.
Alcohol-related deaths in North Dakota are among the most likely to be due to chronic causes. New York has the third-lowest number of alcohol-related deaths per capita among all U.S. states. New Jersey has the second-lowest number of alcohol-related deaths per capita (Utah has the lowest). Children aged 17 years and younger are much more likely to live with an alcoholic parent than they are to be diagnosed with a learning disability or ADHD. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health organizations, there are no recorded cases of people dying from cannabis alone.
But research suggests far fewer young people and teenagers are using drugs (other than cannabis). This trend matters because new users have low physical tolerance for opioids such as fentanyl, which means they’re more likely to overdose and potentially die. Thirty years after the U.S. opioid crisis began — and a decade after fentanyl spread nationwide — the U.S. has made strides developing better and more affordable services for people experiencing addiction. Medications that reduce opioid cravings, including buprenorphine and methadone, are more widely available, in part because of insurance coverage provided by Medicaid. In many states, roughly $50 billion in opioid settlement money paid out by corporations is also starting to help.
“The comparison of deaths attributed to drug use among men and women over the past decade shows that the number of deaths attributed to drug use disorders, in particular opioid use disorders, has increased disproportionately among women, with a 92 per cent increase in deaths attributed to opioid use disorders among women compared with a 63 per cent increase among men.” In 2024, the National Drug Control Budget requested $44.5 billion across agencies focused on expanding efforts to reverse opioid overdoses, disrupt the drug supply chain, and provide support for prevention, treatment, and recovery. Kentucky is a statistical anomaly with a low rate of underage drinking deaths and a low rate of chronic causes. Economists as well as healthcare and addiction specialists agree the pandemic and quarantines of 2020 had a significant impact on nationwide alcohol consumption. As alcohol overdose cannabis becomes more accepted worldwide for medical and recreational use, questions about its safety continue to be discussed.
“Our study also found sex differences in the risk of all-cause mortality. A larger risk of all-cause mortality for women than men was observed when drinking 25 or more grams per day, including a significant increase in risk for medium-level consumption for women that was not observed for men. However, mortality risk for mean consumption up to 25 g per day were very similar for both sexes.” “ For males, the rate increased from 2.1 in 2009 to 6.4 in 2018. For females, the rate increased from 0.7 in 2009 to 2.6 in 2018. For each year, rates were 2.4 to 3.0 times higher for males than females.” “• The age-adjusted death rate for the White population (893.9) was 1.9 times greater than for the Asian non-Hispanic (subsequently, Asian) population (461.7) and 1.2 times greater than for the Hispanic population (724.7). “• The age-adjusted death rate for the Black non-Hispanic (subsequently, Black) population (1,118.0) was 1.3 times greater than for the White population (893.9). “• The age-adjusted death rate for the American Indian and Alaska Native non-Hispanic (subsequently, American Indian and Alaska Native) population (1,109.2) was 1.2 times greater than for the White non-Hispanic (subsequently, White) population (893.9). In other words, the likelihood that a user may overdose or develop health issues has no impact on its classification as a Schedule I – V drug.
Most recently, Geronimus and colleagues (2019) documented changes in educational disparities in working-age (and older) mortality between 1990 and 2015 for Black and White women Substance abuse and men. This study measured educational attainment using population quartiles to help account for the effects of increasing educational attainment across time. Similar to Ho (2017), Geronimus and colleagues (2019) demonstrated that increasing drug-related mortality was especially concentrated among lower-educated White adults and accounted for 73 percent and 44 percent of the increasing educational disparity in working-age mortality for White men and White women, respectively. The authors concluded that one-half (White women) to 80 percent (White men) of the increasing educational disparity in working-age mortality over the 1990–2015 period was due to drugs, alcohol, or suicide, with educational differences in drug poisoning mortality particularly important for understanding widening educational disparities in working-age mortality among White women and men since 1990. Increases in drug-related mortality among Blacks differed only very modestly by educational attainment and thus had very little influence on changing educational disparities in working-age mortality.
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