In 2010, there were 80,000 drug and alcohol overdose deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's WONDER database. The database, maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics, keeps a tally of all the deaths listed on certificates nationwide. They're classified by the ICD-10 medical coding reference system.
Death reporting in the U.S. requires an underlying cause-the event or disease that lead to the death. This chart represents all those listed in the CDC database as "accidental poisoning," "intentional self-poisoning," "assault by drugs," and "poisoning with undetermined intent." In addition to the underlying cause, a death certificate has space for up to 20 additional causes. That's where "cocaine" or "antidepressants" would show up. The subcategories are limited in their detail-many drugs are lumped together, like MDMA and caffeine, which are listed together as "psychostimulants." And about a quarter of all overdose death certificates don't have the toxicity test results listed at all, landing them in the "unspecified" stripe
