Drug Overdose Deaths

Limitations

Overdose deaths of every intent (unintentional, suicide, assault, undetermined) by home county: not comparable with CDC MIOV's overdose_deaths (unintentional and undetermined only). drug_type rows overlap (a death counts under each drug involved; opioid types nest): never add across them. OASIS withholds rates on 1-4 deaths. race_unknown is our count, with no rate. Race groups are NULL in 33 county-years (2000-2006 and 2013) with over 20% unknown race; small groups are not trends before 2015. CDC MIOV also processes its records separately. Age-adjusted rates are OASIS's: weighted averages of age-specific rates with the year 2000 U.S. standard million as weights, so places and groups with different age mixes compare fairly; they never add or average across rows. OASIS publishes every count, however small, and withholds rates based on 1-4 events (NULL here); the platform adds no small-cell suppression of its own and never recomputes a withheld rate. A group with no residents in a place (num_population 0) has no rate (NULL): OASIS shows 0 there, but a rate on no population is undefined and would rank as the lowest (our mask; the count stays 0 unless the race mask NULLs it). 73% of rows with at least one death have no age-adjusted rate, mostly 1-4 deaths in small counties and groups: in 2025, 71 of the 134 counties with an overdose death have a published age-adjusted rate, and the other 63 had 1-4 deaths. The case definition is OASIS's (NCHS specifications): underlying cause X40-X44, X60-X64, X85 or Y10-Y14, any drug, alcohol excluded, and deaths coded to drug use disorders (ICD-10 F codes) not counted. The drug types are the drugs listed among the death's other causes (ICD-10 T40): any_opioid contains natural_semisynthetic_or_synthetic_opioid (which contains synthetic_opioid_other_than_methadone and methadone) and heroin, and a death involving two counts in both (Georgia 2020: natural_semisynthetic_or_synthetic_opioid 1,165 and heroin 393 against 1,300 any_opioid deaths, so at least 258 involved both). Deaths involving no opioid (stimulants such as cocaine or methamphetamine, or other drugs) are in all only: OASIS publishes no stimulant type. A drug type counts only drugs the death certificate names, so part of a type's change can be reporting, not deaths (our reading): in 2006 any_opioid fell to 181 (237 in 2005, 321 in 2007) while all overdose deaths rose (622, 705, 819). Opioids were involved in 57% of Georgia's overdose deaths in 2025 (74% at most, 2022); deaths peaked at 2,678 in 2022. Race groups follow the platform convention from OASIS's race x ethnicity cross: hispanic is Hispanic of any race; white, black, asian, native_american (American Indian or Alaska Native), pacific_islander (Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander) and multiracial are non-Hispanic. race_unknown is our calculation, the total minus those seven (unknown ethnicity, or non-Hispanic of unknown race), so the race groups add up to all wherever the race mask (below) leaves them; it has no population and so no rate. Hispanic ethnicity is under-reported on death certificates, so hispanic counts and rates may be low. 8-23 overdose deaths a year in 2000-2006 are race_unknown, against at most 7 since (the all-cause death topics show the same break), so the non-Hispanic groups are undercounted then, and the small groups' series (multiracial, native_american, pacific_islander) are too small and too unevenly recorded before 2015 to read as trends. Where race or ethnicity is unknown for more than 20% of a place-year's overdose deaths (race_unknown / all), the race groups' counts and rates for that place and year are NULL (our mask, OASIS's own 20% threshold for missing items): each group's count would miss its share of the unknowns, so its rate runs low and its trend follows the recording, not the group. The all, sex and race_unknown rows are kept, so the unknown share stays visible. It applies to 33 county-years (28 counties, 2000-2006 and 2013, never Georgia), on every drug type: in those years a race group's county deaths can add up to less than Georgia's race row, which counts every county. num_population is OASIS's own population (its population module) for the place, year and group, the denominator of every crude rate (num_deaths / num_population x 100,000 reproduces each published crude rate); the race groups' populations add to all, as do male and female. Deaths are placed by county of residence as OASIS geocodes it. 2025 is the newest year; OASIS marks no year provisional. Counties add up to Georgia, except a race group's deaths in a year the race mask NULLs some of its county rows. Not served: OASIS's SES-vulnerability rows (its SES 'rates' divide by the whole place's population), age and education breakdowns, and the percent-of-deaths measure. tract_geoid is always NULL.