Cornyn overstates drug death numbers

The claim: “Texas remains one of the most severely impacted states from drug trafficking. Nearly 3,000 Texans died from drug related deaths in 2017 with half being overdoses involving opioids.” — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn made the statement amid a series of tweets about drug overdose deaths. PolitiFact ruling: Half True. Looking at raw figures, Texas was among the states with the most drug-related deaths in 2017. But when we look at the rate of drug-related deaths, which accounts for population, Texas was No. 47 in overdose deaths per capita. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

Discussion: Drew Brandewie, a spokesman for Cornyn, said the tweet was based on the senator’s opening statement at a Senate Drug Caucus hearing, which included additional context about the first half of the claim.

“My home state of Texas remains one of the most severely impacted states in terms of volume of trafficking and all related mayhem that accompanies the illicit activity,” Cornyn said at the hearing, before offering the same statistics included in his tweet.

Cornyn’s tweet doesn’t include the extra note that Texas is one of the most severely impacted states “in terms of volume of trafficking and all related mayhem” — which could include several categories of data. Brandewie said the number of overdose deaths in the state was an example of related mayhem.

Instead, Cornyn’s tweet aswritten suggests his claim is just in reference to the number of overdose deaths in the state. This is the perspective we used to fact-check his claim, but we considered the context from the hearing.

With this in mind, Cornyn’s figures are accurate, but his ranking of Texas as one of the most impacted states in terms of overdose deaths is based on totals that haven’t been adjusted for population size.

The image Cornyn shared with his tweet cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Brandewie confirmed via email that CDC figures were the basis of Cornyn’s tweet.

Data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mirror the figures in Cornyn’s tweet:

In 2017, there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths across the country and 2,989 overdose deaths in Texas.

Looking just at overdose deaths in 2017, opioids were involved in 67.8 percent of deaths nationwide and 48.8 percent of deaths in Texas.

Cornyn’s tweet connects the number of drug overdose deaths in Texas in 2017 to the state’s status as one of the states most severely impacted by drug trafficking, but does that check out?

In 2017, there were 2,989 drug-related deaths in Texas, making it the state with the sixth highest number of overdose deaths that year, behind New York (3,921), California (4,868), Florida (5,088), Ohio (5,111) and Pennsylvania (5,388).

But given that Texas is

the second-most populous state, it makes more sense to consider the rate of drug-related deaths per capita than to compare raw totals by state.

If we look at the number of drug-related deaths per capita by state, Texas lands near the bottom of the list with 10.5 overdose deaths per 100,000 people.

Just three states have a lower number of overdose deaths per capita: North Dakota (9.2), South Dakota (8.5) and Nebraska (8.1).

The state with the most drug-related deaths per capita in 2017 was West Virginia with 57.8 deaths per 100,000 total population — or 974 overdose deaths in total.