Fentanyl-caused deaths up by 17% in Colorado

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(The Center Square) – Colorado has seen a 17% increase in deaths from fentanyl over the last year, one of the few states where overdose deaths have increased.

Since December 2024, only four other states – Arizona (26.3%), New Mexico (21%), Montana (13.7%) and South Dakota (12.5%) – saw increases in overdose deaths from synthetic opioids, while the national rate is down 21%, according to a report by Common Sense Institute Colorado.

CSI researchers found that if Colorado had seen a decline in deaths like the national trend, the state would have experienced 1,620 fewer deaths.

“If we just followed the national trend, 1,600 people would still be alive in Colorado, and that is a lot of families that have been devastated by this deadly poison,” one of the report’s authors, former Denver Police Chief and current CSI Public Safety Fellow Paul Pazen, told The Center Square.

Colorado’s synthetic opioid death rate peaked at 1,213 in November 2023, then dropped to 803 one-year later. After November 2024, the state’s rate began rising again to 957 deaths in August 2025, while most of the country’s downward trend continued.

Using the Value of Statistical Life of $13.4 million per person, which CSI said can be “used to quantify the benefit of reducing the risk of death,” CSI estimated $18.3 billion in value from the lost lives.

The report noted that in 2019, Colorado lawmakers downgraded the possession of four grams or less of fentanyl and other drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor. Lawmakers reversed course in 2022, increasing penalties for fentanyl, but including a “knowingly possessing” clause. A 2025 bill would have struck the clause but did not advance in the Legislature.