evidence: Drug overdose deaths rose above 70,000 in 2017, an increase of almost 10 percent to a record high, according to government statistics out Thursday. [...] The death rates are driven mostly by a startling 9.6 percent increase in drug overdose deaths, from 63,632 in 2016, to 70,237 in 2017. Most of the overdoses involved opioids of some sort, and the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics recorded a 45 percent increase in deaths from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and tramadol. They accounted for nearly 30,000 of the drug overdose deaths. [...] "In 2017, a total of 2,813,503 resident deaths were registered in the United States — 69,255 more deaths than in 2016," the CDC report reads.