Published on Monday and based on the National Center for Health Statistics' 2017 data, the report found that opioids overdose was the fifth most probable cause of preventable death, with a one-in-96 odds. The odds of dying in a vehicular crash were one-in-103.
More probable causes than opioids overdoses were heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease and suicide.
Opioids contributed to the overwhelming majority - 69 percent - of fatal drug overdoses in 2016, totalling 37,814 deaths, according to the NSC.
These opioids include the use of illegal narcotics, such as heroin, and prescription painkillers, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone.
"The nation's opioid crisis is fueling the Council's grim probabilities, and that crisis is worsening with an influx of illicit fentanyl," the council said in a statement on Monday, referring to a synthetic opioid often used to treat severe pain.
Just a day before the report was released, one person died and at least 12 people were hospitalised in northern California in what police described as a "mass overdose" stemming from fentanyl use.
In 2017, overdose deaths soared, surpassing 70,000, according to the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.
And between 2013 and 2017, fatal drug overdose rates grew in 35 of the 50 US states as well as the District of Columbia. In many of those states, synthetic opioids were behind a growing number of deaths, as per CDC statistics.
In December, a separate report concluded that fentanyl had become more common than heroin in drug overdose deaths in the country.