Colorado set a record for drug overdose deaths in 2020 — even though stats are only available through September — and Denver apparently did, too. While the final figures aren't in yet, it's clear that fentanyl killed more people in the city last year than it did in the previous three years combined, and fatal overdoses related to methamphetamines and heroin are on the rise, too. Denver registered 284 drug-related deaths through the first eleven months of 2020. That compares to 201 drug-related deaths in all of 2017, 209 in 2018 and 225 in 2019. This trend is hardly isolated. "Increase in Fatal Drug Overdoses Across the United States Driven by Synthetic Opioids Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic," a December 17 report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, notes that 81,230 drug overdose deaths occurred in the U.S. during the twelve-month period ending in May 2020 — the most recent data available.