Drug overdoses spike in those over 40, shows new data

Although pill-testing and increased access to opioid dependence treatment have contributed to a decline in young people dying of drug overdoses, new data shows a troubling rise in fatal overdoses among older Australians.

The Penington Institute’s annual overdose report, released on Sunday, shows 2272 people died of a drug overdose in 2023, the latest year of national data.

This equates to six people a day, making drug-induced deaths a leading cause of death across most adult age categories. Seventy-eight per cent of these deaths – a total of 1768 people – were unintentional.

“There’s been a decline [in overdose deaths] since the peak in the late 2010s, but this is still the tenth straight year with over 2000 Australians dead. It’s still vastly elevated compared to 2001,” said Dr Jake Dizard, director of research at the Penington Institute, a public health not-for-profit.

“These deaths are preventable. If you look at things like the road toll, there’s Vision Zero [a push for zero deaths and serious injuries by 2050] and a national road safety strategy. We don’t have that for drugs.”

The Penington Institute’s Australia’s Annual Overdose Report 2025 said people under 40 years of age accounted for about half of overdose deaths at the turn of the century. Now, this age group accounts for just a quarter of fatal overdoses.

Dizard said it was difficult to pinpoint why young people were now less likely to die of a drug overdose. He said greater drug literacy, the wider distribution of opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone (which can be administered by any witness to an overdose), pill-testing programs, supervised injecting rooms and increased access to opioid dependence treatment had helped.

“Unfortunately, this [decline] has been more than made up for by the increases in the older demographics,” said Dizard.

More than 740 attempted drug imports were disrupted by the AFP and Australian Border Force last year.Credit: AFP

Since 2001, the greatest increase in unintentional overdose deaths was among people aged 50-59 — an increase of 305 per cent. Deaths among people aged 60 to 69 were up 179 per cent, and in the 40-49 category, deaths were up 153 per cent compared to 2001 figures.

Dizard said the rise in fatal overdoses among people aged 50 and over was partly due to the ageing of people who had become regular users of drugs in the 1990s and 2000s. Another factor was a rise in prescriptions for drugs such as antidepressants, benzodiazepines and opioids since the turn of the century.

“Overall, there’s a very significant rise in the number of prescriptions across lots of different types of drug groups, and that does correlate with that rise in deaths, including in older people,” he said.

The institute is calling for the establishment of a national body to eliminate drug overdoses, the legalisation of cannabis and a shift in funding from “ineffective law enforcement” to drug education and overdose prevention.

But the federal government said it provided “substantial investment into a broad range of programs and activities aimed at minimising the harms associated with alcohol and other drug use in Australia”, including listing opioid dependence treatment medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Australian governments spend about $5.45 billion on proactive responses to illicit drugs, including $3.5 billion on law enforcement responses such as border control, policing, court prosecutions and community corrections, a report by the Drug Policy Modelling Program found.

Alcohol contributed to 18.4 per cent of unintentional drug-induced deaths in 2023.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

The report said most overdose deaths were the result of using more than one drug or drug type, including alcohol, at the same time or consecutively. The report found alcohol contributed to 18.4 per cent of unintentional drug-induced deaths in 2023, while antidepressants contributed to 16.9 per cent.

Dizard said in the years between 2019 and 2023, there were 580 unintentional overdose deaths in which antidepressants were the sole drug consumed, representing a tiny proportion of total antidepressant use. In 2022-2023, 3.7 million Australians were prescribed antidepressants via the PBS.

The report also found that stimulants such as amphetamines and MDMA had overtaken benzodiazepines as the second most common drug group involved in unintentional overdose deaths, contributing to one-third of fatal overdoses in 2023. Opioids remained the single biggest driver of deaths.

Drug overdoses were much more common among men, disadvantaged people and Indigenous people, the report found. “Men are significantly more likely to experience unintentional drug-induced death across most age groups and drug types. Residents of rural and regional parts of the country, and people living in lower socio-economic areas are also over-represented in such deaths,” the report said.

Victoria Police dismantles a cannabis crop inside a Mordialloc factory.Credit: Victoria Police

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing said the federal government was “committed to working with states and territories to ensure future work remains focused on reducing the harms associated with illicit drugs, including overdoses”.

A spokesperson for the Victorian government said it was “reducing drug harms in our community through pill testing, naloxone vending machines and expanding access to pharmacotherapy”. The government is working on a statewide overdose prevention and response helpline trial, and installing 20 naloxone-dispensing machines in areas of high drug harm.

Alice Salomon is head of advocacy at Uniting NSW.ACT, which runs the medically supervised injecting centre in Sydney’s Kings Cross. She called on the NSW government to improve diversion programs, to equip police with naloxone and to allow more communities to apply for medically supervised injecting facilities.

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