In 2015, for the first time ever, the number of heroin overdoses in America outnumbered the number of gun homicide deaths, according to new government statistics released Thursday. Deaths from heroin overdoses spiked by 23 percent in 2015, up to 12,989, while the number of gun deaths, which also rose, landed at 12,979, according to data released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as part of its annual report on the number of deaths and death rates. In 1999, slightly more than 8,000 people died from opioid overdoses. By 2015, the number rose steadily to more than 33,000 — a nearly 300 percent increase over 16 years. Opioids are drugs, including heroin, that act on the nervous system to relieve pain. "I don't think we've ever seen anything like this, certainly not in modern times," said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the CDC. The rise in overdose deaths comes as the life expectancy for Americans dropped for the first time in more than two decades. According to the latest data released earlier this week by the CDC, the overall life expectancy in the U.S. dropped slightly from 78.9 years to 78.8 years from 2014 to 2015. The last time U.S. life expectancy dropped was in 1993, when it saw a similarly small drop, from 75.6 to 75.4 On Wednesday, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which will allocate $1 billion to fight the opioid epidemic. The money will be used for addiction treatment and prevention programs.