Los Angeles County evidence
Los Angeles County Overdose Deaths, 2016 to 2025
Los Angeles County accidental overdose deaths peaked in 2022 and have fallen for three consecutive years, according to the county Department of Public Health's analysis of medical examiner records. The decline is real and it is driven by fentanyl. It is not evenly shared, and in the San Fernando Valley the most recent year did not decline at all.
By RehabLosAngeles.org · Reviewed 2026-09-06 · organizational authorship; every figure resolves from the cited dataset at build time.
How many people die of overdose in Los Angeles County each year?
2,298 in 2025, down from a peak of 3,220 in 2022. The county recorded 1,123 accidental overdose deaths in 2016, so even after three years of decline the toll is roughly double what it was a decade ago.
The fall from 3,137 deaths in 2023 to 2,442 in 2024 was a 22 percent drop, the largest single-year decline in county history. From 2024 to 2025 deaths fell a further 6 percent. Against the 2022 peak, 2025 is 29 percent lower.
The age-adjusted rate tells the same story: 30.8 deaths per 100,000 residents at the peak, 21.6 in 2025.
Overdose has been the leading cause of accidental death in the county since 2017, when it overtook both traffic crashes and firearms, and it still is.
Which drugs are involved explains most of both the rise and the fall.
Which drugs are involved in Los Angeles County overdose deaths?
Methamphetamine and fentanyl, usually one or both. Methamphetamine was involved in 61 percent of 2025 deaths and fentanyl in 49 percent, and 39 percent involved a stimulant and an opioid together.
Fentanyl deaths rose from a few dozen a year in 2016 to 2,001 in 2023, then fell 37 percent in 2024 and a further 10 percent in 2025, to 1,135. Its share of all deaths fell from 64 percent in 2023 to 49 percent.
Methamphetamine has been the leading drug in county overdose deaths for most of the decade, briefly overtaken by fentanyl in 2022 and 2023. It was involved in 1,890 deaths at its 2023 peak and 1,405 in 2025, a smaller decline than fentanyl.
Cocaine was involved in 20 percent of 2025 deaths. Heroin and prescription opioids other than fentanyl, which together dominated the 2016 figures, were each involved in about 5 percent.
The decline has also reached some groups much sooner than others.
Who is dying of overdose in Los Angeles County?
Mostly middle-aged men, disproportionately Black residents, and disproportionately people in poor neighborhoods. Adults aged 40 to 64 were 53 percent of 2025 deaths, with a rate of 38.5 per 100,000.
Adults aged 26 to 39 were a further 29 percent. The male age-adjusted rate was 34.1 per 100,000 against 9.8 for women.
Black residents had an age-adjusted rate of 60.5 per 100,000, against 29.3 for white residents and 18.2 for Hispanic and Latino residents. Black residents are about 7 percent of the county population and 22 percent of overdose deaths.
Neighborhoods where more than 30 percent of families live below the federal poverty level had a rate of 76.9 per 100,000, 4.7 times the 16.3 recorded in areas where fewer than 10 percent do.
The county's own regions tell the last part of the story.
How does the San Fernando Valley compare?
Below the county average over the decade, but the only region where deaths did not fall in 2025. The Valley recorded 4,074 accidental overdose deaths from 2016 to 2025, a rate of 18.5 per 100,000, against 21.8 countywide.
Metro Los Angeles, which includes Skid Row, recorded 5,496 deaths over the same period at a rate of 48.4, by far the highest of any region.
From 2024 to 2025 the age-adjusted rate fell in every service planning area except the San Fernando Valley. The county report does not say why. It is one reason a guide to Valley treatment centers should be more interested in what happens after discharge, when overdose risk is highest, than in amenities.
The days after detox carry the highest risk of all, because opioid tolerance drops faster than the habit does. Every center in this guide provides detox; the question to ask is what is arranged for the week after it.
Those questions are what the rest of this guide is built around.
What the data says, in short
- Accidental overdose deaths peaked at 3,220 in 2022 and were 2,298 in 2025.
- Fentanyl deaths fell 37 percent in 2024 and 10 percent in 2025.
- Methamphetamine was involved in 61 percent of 2025 deaths, more than any other drug.
- Black residents died at 60.5 per 100,000, roughly twice the white rate.
- The San Fernando Valley was the only region whose rate did not fall from 2024 to 2025.
Sources
- Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Substance Abuse Prevention and Control, Data Report: Drug Overdoses in Los Angeles County. publichealth.lacounty.gov. Published June 2026. Accidental drug overdose and poisoning deaths, 2016 to 2025, from Department of Medical Examiner data as of May 2026.
- County of Los Angeles, Drug-Related Overdose Deaths in LA County Continue to Fall. lacounty.gov. County announcement accompanying the June 2026 report.
Every figure on this page is resolved from the dataset above at build time rather than typed into the prose, so the number shown and the number published by the source cannot drift apart.