Gun violence has surpassed the opioid epidemic as the nation's top public health concern, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll released May 18.
The poll was conducted May 12-15 among a nationally representative sample of 1,095 U.S. adults.
Twenty-six percent of Americans cited access to guns or firearms as the No. 1 threat to public health, up from 17 percent in February. Twenty-five percent of Americans cited opioids and fentanyl as the top threat, down 1 percentage point from February.
On May 17, the CDC released provisional data showing drug overdose deaths plateaued in 2022, disrupting a pattern of dramatic annual increases. However, overdose death rates are still high. At least 105,452 people died of overdoses last year, and this figure is expected to rise as more state agencies report deaths.