Overdose
Australia's Annual Overdose Report
The 2025 edition of Australia's Annual Overdose Report demonstrates overdose remains a national crisis, claiming the lives of over 6 Australians every day. The urgency for action remains as strong as ever.
- There were 2,272 overdose deaths in 2023, equivalent to over 6 people per day.
- 78% of all overdose deaths were unintentional.
- This is the tenth year running that over 2,000 overdose deaths have been recorded.
- The annual number of overdose deaths has almost doubled between 2001 and 2023.
- Since 2001, there have been 42,526 overdose deaths in Australia.
It’s time for governments to ‘get serious’ on overdose responses. Australia has recorded more than 2,000 overdose deaths for 10 straight years.
Pause and consider that figure – it’s as if a Boeing 737 plane full of people crashed every month, or the road toll reverted to the horrific numbers in the 1980s.
On average, overdose takes six loved ones away from families and communities each day. These are deaths that our political leaders sometimes appear to take as a given.
But these deaths are avoidable.
Much like we’ve adopted an ambitious ‘towards zero’ attitude to comprehensively pushing down the road toll, Australia must now embrace a similarly uncompromising push to stop overdose deaths.
There’s ample opportunity for Australia to apply proven solutions to radically reduce the number of people and families experiencing the loss and pain of overdose.
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