A display representing a medicine cabinet informs visitors to a memorial by the National Safety Council with data about opioids, Jan. 29, 2018, in Pittsburgh. The exhibit also features a wall with 22,000 carved medicine pills, each representing the face of someone who fatally overdosed, was launched in Chicago in November 2017.

The opioid crisis remains one of the most pressing public health emergencies in the United States. In 2023 alone, more than 81,000 Americans lost their lives to opioid overdoses, adding to the devastating toll of 454,464 deaths since the crisis was declared a public health emergency in 2017.

While prescription rates have declined, a clear connection persists between prescription opioids and the broader epidemic. Alarmingly, in 2020, prescription opioids accounted for 21% of all opioid-related deaths, and in 2023, prescribing rates remained troublingly high at 37.5 prescriptions per 100 people.