Over 47,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States in 2014—more than any previous year on record. In fact, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death by injury in the country, surpassing auto accidents.

To help policymakers and the public understand drug abuse—including misuse of prescription drugs—and what can be done to address it, we added Illicit Drug Use to our collection of Key Issues. This new Key Issues page provides bottom line information about the issue and links to our key reports on the topic, including the results of our 2016 forum on strategies to prevent illicit drug use.

In order to illustrate the impact of illicit drug use on individuals and families, the forum began with two video testimonials of individuals who are in recovery from a substance abuse disorder—discussing how they started using drugs and their paths to recovery. Watch their stories:

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