During the last years of the twentieth century, between 6,000 and 7,000 Europeans died each year from an overdose, generally of heroin. The number of such deaths peaked in the early 1990s in most EU countries and was falling since then.
In the USA, about 120,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2022. That is 334 deaths per day (CDC data on combined drug overdoses). Many of these are from Fentanyl (a synthetic opioid) overdoses, which have surged to become the leading cause of death for adults between the ages of 18 and 45, notably following limitations on previously profligate Oxycontin prescription which created a generation of opioid addicts. Between 2020 and 2021, nearly 79,000 people between 18 and 45 years old — 37,208 in 2020 and 41,587 in 2021 — died of fentanyl overdoses (Families Against Fentanyl). Fentanyl is extremely cheap and extremely potent. It is easily cut into other drugs, like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine (even marijuana), so that the newly formulated product potency is much greater than the actual product. People may be unaware that their drugs are laced with fentanyl.
Those addicts who inject themselves with drugs have a 20 to 30 times higher risk of dying prematurely than those of equal age who do not take drugs.