Courtney Bass, an outreach worker with Milestone Recovery, talks with homeless people as she gathers food to give them in Scarborough in December 2024. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)
Fatal drug overdoses continue to decline in Maine this year, although nonfatal overdoses have climbed since 2025, according to state statistics.
From January through April, the most recent data available, there were 109 overdose deaths recorded, down from 132 over the same period in 2025. That’s a decrease of 17.4%.
Overdose deaths peaked in Maine in 2022 at 723, but have been on a steady decline since, dropping to 390 in 2025. Drug deaths have also declined nationally in recent years, including a 13.2% drop over the 12-month period that ended in January, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We are getting better and better at keeping people alive,” said Gordon Smith, director of opioid response for the Mills administration. “But long term, what we really need to be focusing on is prevention.”
The Mills administration has expanded treatment and increased supplies and access to naloxone, a life-saving opioid antidote, to combat the opioid crisis.
“Harm reduction works,” said Courtney Gary-Allen, executive director of the nonprofit Maine Recovery Access Project. Access to clean syringes can help get people into treatment, and naloxone availability keeps people alive until they receive help, she said.
While nonfatal overdoses declined along with fatal overdoses in 2023 and 2024, nonfatal overdoses have increased since then.
Nonfatal overdoses in Maine jumped from 8,045 in 2024 to 9,072 in 2025, a 12.75% increase. They’ve continued to increase in 2026, a 3.6% hike through the first four months of the year.
Gordon Smith, Maine’s director of opioid response. (Derek Davis/Staff Photographer)
Experts say it’s too early to draw conclusions, but one factor could be the reduced presence of fentanyl — a powerful and deadly opioid — in overdose deaths. Fentanyl was present in 78% of all Maine overdose deaths in 2023, and 72% in 2024 before dropping to 54% in 2025, and 57% so far in 2026, according to state statistics.
“We are seeing less fentanyl, while cocaine and methamphetamine are up,” Smith said. “Cocaine and methamphetamine are bad for you, but they don’t as readily kill people.”
Cocaine use in fatal overdoses has increased from 37% of all drug deaths in 2023 to 45% in 2025, while methamphetamine contributing to death is about the same, at 31% in 2025, compared to 33% in 2023.
Smith said it’s difficult to know whether fentanyl use is down, or whether the supply of illicit drugs contain lower concentrations of fentanyl than a few years ago, which would make them less lethal. He said a number of factors could be causing fentanyl to show up in fewer overdose deaths.
Dr. Noah Nesin, a Bangor-area physician and opioid expert, said it’s “really hard to know why this is happening, but usage doesn’t appear to be down.”
“Maybe people are combining substances like fentanyl and cocaine, using them in a way that’s less fatal,” Nesin said.
Courtney Gary-Allen leads a nonprofit for people in recovery and is also in recovery herself. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)
Nesin said opioids can cause respiratory distress, and people die when overdosing when they stop breathing. Stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine can also cause death, but through cardiac arrest, which is possible but not as likely as when overdosing on opioids, he said.
“More people staying alive than otherwise is a good thing, but are we really changing people’s behaviors? I don’t know. These are challenging questions to answer,” Nesin said.
Gary-Allen said another possible reason is the passage of Maine’s Good Samaritan law in 2022, which ensures that people who call 911 for a drug overdose are not arrested for certain nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession. Gary-Allen said it took a few years, but people are less afraid to call 911 when they witness a drug overdose, saving lives and leading to more nonfatal overdoses being reported.
