About OpiEye

What Is OpiEye

OpiEye is a free, public-facing interactive map showing drug overdose risk by county across all 50 United States and Washington, D.C. It combines CDC provisional data, Census population estimates, and international health authority reports to help people understand the scale and geography of the overdose crisis.

The map covers over 3,100 counties with data from 2015 to the present. Users can explore deaths, emergency department visit estimates, and per capita rates over time. A memorial feature lets visitors honor people they have lost to overdose by placing a candle on the map.

Why It Exists

Drug overdoses kill approximately 80,000 Americans per year — one person every 6.6 minutes. Opioids are involved in 68% of these deaths, and fentanyl alone accounts for 60%. Most people do not know the risk level in their own neighborhood.

OpiEye exists to make that risk visible, understandable, and actionable — for families, overdose prevention workers, public health officials, and anyone who wants to understand what is happening in their community.

Behind every number on the map is a real person. The memorial feature exists because data alone does not capture loss.

Ethical Commitments

These are not preferences. They define what OpiEye is and what it will never become:

• No misidentification. OpiEye never claims a specific person died of an overdose unless a public record says so. Public records — coroner reports, state dashboards, CDC data — are public data. Individuals are only named when a family member submits a memorial with explicit consent.
• No law enforcement use cases. OpiEye is for overdose prevention and community support, not policing.
• No user tracking. No analytics scripts, no third-party trackers, no cookies that follow you across the web. We do not know who visits this site.
• No advertising. OpiEye will never show ads. Revenue, when needed, will come from public health grants.
• Memorial consent. Memorials are only shared publicly when the submitter explicitly checks a consent box. Families can request removal at any time through the Feedback page.

Privacy

OpiEye uses privacy-preserving aggregate analytics — we count total page views and county clicks per day, but we never identify individual visitors. There are no tracking pixels, no third-party analytics scripts, and no cookies that follow you across the web. The only cookies on this site are session cookies for the optional account system — they are HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Strict. They exist solely to remember your login if you choose to create an account. Map tiles are loaded from CARTO (basemaps.cartocdn.com); their privacy policy applies to tile requests.

Memorial photos are stored on our server only when consent is given. Families can request removal at any time.

Data Sources

All data displayed on OpiEye comes from public sources:

• United States county data: CDC Vital Statistics Rapid Release (VSRR) and National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
• Population estimates: United States Census Bureau Population Estimates Program
• International data: National health authorities of 27 countries, including Public Health Agency of Canada, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Office for National Statistics (United Kingdom), and the European Union Drugs Agency

For full details on how data is collected, processed, and where our numbers may differ from other sources, see the Methodology page.

Who Built This

OpiEye was created by Brogan Lee after losing his brother to a fentanyl overdose in 2015. It is an independent public health data project — not affiliated with any government agency, pharmaceutical company, or law enforcement organization.

Support This Project

OpiEye is free, has no advertising, and is sustained through public health grants. If you represent a foundation, health department, or organization interested in supporting or partnering with OpiEye, please reach out through the Feedback page or email brogan@opieye.com.

Contact

To report a data issue, suggest an improvement, or request removal of a memorial, use the Feedback page.