November 4, 2025

BENGALURU: Hold your breath! In 2023, India lost nearly 12 people every single week to drug overdose, according to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). That’s almost two lives lost each day — a grim number that stayed steady over five years from 2019 to 2023, with 3,290 deaths in total. But wait, there's more! This scary figure only counts confirmed overdose deaths. The real numbers could be much higher, as many cases go unreported or get misclassified. Also, the data doesn’t tell us if these overdoses were caused by illegal narcotics or prescription drugs like sleeping pills or painkillers, which experts think may be hiding in the shadows. Doctors, psychiatrists, and retired cops told TOI, “There needs to be more clarity in the classification of drug overdose cases.” They suggest many deaths could stem from prescription drug misuse rather than only narcotics. The death numbers in India haven’t shown a simple trend. In 2019, there were 704 deaths. During the Covid lockdown in 2020, deaths dropped to 514 — lockdowns possibly slowed drug misuse or reporting. But then things worsened in 2021, with deadly overdoses rising to 737, the highest in five years. The numbers eased slightly afterwards: 681 in 2022 and 654 in 2023. Which states are the main trouble spots? Tamil Nadu was the overdose leader in the early years, with 108 deaths in 2019. It skyrocketed to 250 in 2021, but then experienced a stunning fall — just 50 deaths in 2022 and a small rise to 65 in 2023. Punjab, next door to Pakistan—a known drug smuggling route—has stayed persistently dangerous. Not in the top five in 2019, it had 34 deaths in 2020. Then it doubled to 78 in 2021, jumped to 144 in 2022 (the highest that year), and even though it dropped to 89 in 2023, it still topped the charts nationwide. Rajasthan never took its eyes off the overdose crisis, rising steadily from 60 deaths in 2019 to 117 in 2022. It slightly dropped to 84 in 2023 but consistently stayed in the top five states battling overdoses. Madhya Pradesh joined the alarming list later, with 34 deaths in 2021 but quickly rose to 74 in 2022 and 85 in 2023, ranking second highest last year. Northeast states like Mizoram and Manipur appeared in the top five sometimes — Mizoram had 30 deaths in 2020 and 61 in 2022, and Manipur saw 36 deaths in 2021. Karnataka also featured among the worst-hit in 2019 and 2020 but faded from the top five later. This rollercoaster ride of numbers shows that drug overdose remains a serious threat all over India. With confusion over what substances cause these deaths, experts urge better tracking and clear data to fight this silent killer effectively. How many more lives will vanish unnoticed? The data shouts for urgent action!

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Tags: Drug Overdose, Ncrb data, India, Death Statistics, Prescription Drugs, State-Wise Overdose,