“We’ve had more Americans die of fentanyl than the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam Wars, combined.”
About 65,300 soldiers died in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined. About 127,000 Americans died from drug overdoses involving a synthetic opioid other than methadone in 2020 and 2021, federal data shows. These deaths are primarily because of fentanyl. War deaths are often used as a way to illustrate the scale of a public health crisis. U.S. health officials typically track opioid deaths alongside deaths from other public health causes like heart disease or cancer.