Coast to coast, major U.S. cities are seeing measurable drops in drug overdose deaths. Public health officials welcome the news despite an inability to fully explain the decrease.
After years of rising, the tide may finally be turning on deadly drug overdoses in America.
Drug overdose deaths fell 12.7% in the 12 months ending in May, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is the largest recorded reduction in overdose deaths,” White House officials said in a statement. “And the sixth consecutive month of reported decreases in predicted 12-month total numbers of drug overdose deaths.”
It’s also the first time since early 2021 that the number of estimated drug overdose deaths for a 12-month period fell below 100,000, to 98,820.
It’s categorically good news. It’s also a bit puzzling to the public health experts who have been working for years to stop the upward trajectory of opioid deaths, driven primarily by fentanyl.
I went to pick a prescription at my local Walmart today (texas) and they had a sign saying that they have narcan or noloxone available. My guess is the easy access to narcan and the awareness of it nowadays.
OK, let’s keep doing what we’re doing: endless troll posting of attack ad propaganda about candidates in the upcmoming election. Because somehow its saving lives?
Public and first responder access to Narcan. Paramedic and I haven’t had to administer it in months thanks to bystanders, law enforcement and fire rescue getting it on board before I arrive
In my city, there’s a LOT of homeless addicts who abuse drugs. My city invested heavily in providing specialists who walk around with narcan and other supplies.
A few years prior to that, Law enforcement used to arrest these addicts.
So what you’re saying is that they (the city) treated it as a medical problem and not a law enforcement problem. Now you’re seeing fewer deaths and better outcomes for addicts who clearly need help. All they need to do now is work on the mental health issues to treat homelessness and addiction and then gain societal profit. It’s like there is a kinda of logic to treating people with empathy and respect results in better outcomes…
Quality/purity of fentanyl in Norcal has gone way down recently apparently. https://sfstandard.com/2024/08/12/fentanyl-soap-purity/ at least here I’m sure that is a major contributing factor
It’s easily accessible weed, isn’t it?
No. It’s that most drug users have become aware of narcan, how to use it, and that we started leaving narcan with addicts and their family members after running an overdose call to them, that pretty much all the police, fire, and ems all keep narcan on hand, and that anyone can walk into target and buy the stuff.
Pretty much all the overdoses are from heroin and/or fentanyl. Narcan just gets misted up a nostril and about 2 to 5 minutes later it’s taken over the receptors that heroin/fentanyl bind to.
So the drug problem isn’t lessening. We just started handing out the antidote to an overdose like candy on Halloween
Judging from the fact that Oregon, Washington and Colorado are not seeing deaths reduced my thought is no.
But it should still happen.
Nobody I know will even buy weed off the street anymore because of fentanyl. I’m willing to guess people are hyper aware of it, no matter what their drugs of choice are.
Nobody is putting fentanyl into your weed. It’s financially irresponsible to put a more expensive drug into a less expensive drug and kill your customers with it. And drug dealers care about their money beyond all else, they aren’t going to fuck up their own business. Not only do they want you to come back for more later, they’re definitely not out sourcing fentanyl and then selling it at weed prices, if you want the fenty weed, you damn well better pay up for it.
People getting fentanyl and not knowing it are buying cheap heroin. Because that’s what it is. It’s a heroin analogue that’s way stronger and can be sold cheaper because a nano speck of it is like 4 doses vs an 8-ball of good smack being one or two.
If you buy street weed and it has fentanyl in it and you didn’t ask for it specifically, someone is trying to kill you in particular.
Fentanyl in weed can be a thing though. Scales used by dealers who are weighing different drugs, aren’t necessarily cleaning the scale between use. Cocaine is the bigger offender in that scenario though, and can definitely lead to a way easier overdose than weed would
You know, that’s a good point. I was approaching this from a “nobody would do this on purpose” perspective, and while I do still stand by my point, yours isn’t one I considered.
Where I grew up, every third too-stoned teenager would be like “maaaaan, this weed is laced with acid” and, no, it never was, and there’s like three different really good reasons why it never was. The “street weed can have fentanyl in it!! You could die!!” people have been, in my experience, overwhelmingly that same group.
But that said though you make a very compelling point for simple negligence being the source of those stories.
I actually know of a young couple in my town who died from fentanyl in their weed. I went and told everyone I knew (and linked them the obits) to warn them to stop buying street weed (it’s illegal here) and make sure they’re getting it safe.
Terrifying stuff.
And people are testing their drugs for fentanyl now because of that hyper awareness. Public awareness, easier access to narcan, and fentanyl test strips are probably big contributors to the decrease in OD deaths
why would you buy weed off the street instead of from the friendly and incredibly stoned budtender in the basement of a strip mall
I’ve seen that as well, along with various methods of testing/purifying becoming common depending on the compound.
Because druggies are dying and are not being replaced fast enough
Doctor’s are being watched for how many pills the prescribe. Add education to a new generation that watched their parents destroy their lives.
Gotta ask how many of those overdose pills were actually prescribed, rather than illicit from the start.
A lot of them. So many that there are class action lawsuits because of over-prescription. Make no mistake pharmaceutical companies are AT THE HEART of this epidemic.
Yes I do remember now about the Sacklers going unprosecuted. But I thought a lot was made in Asian labs and simply narco-trafficked. I wonder what the numbers were like.
This guy was one of the trafficking tycoons:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/06/asia/tse-chi-lop-sunblock-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
Edit: fixed some phone keyboard slips.
John Oliver did 4 stories on them. I highly recommend watching them. Youtube has them all for free.
One town in West Virginia was prescribed something crazy like a thousand per person (my number could be way off but it was a massive red flag for the feds).
Edit: The Sackler family is the owners behind it.
There were pharmacies refilling prescriptions indefinitely, including expired ones.
Or I knew of at least one pharmacy that was in my area. That helped keep the flow going. The prescription was just the first step.
Also people would hit a range of pharmacies on ome prescription.
If you tell people that if they do a certain thing that it will most likely kill them or have a high likelihood of killing them … eventually enough people begin to understand that.
Children and young people are also very intelligent people with no preconceived or prejudiced ideas of their own (unless taught by someone else) … so they are quick to learn from the mistakes of others around them if given the chance.
If you tell people that if they do a certain thing that it will most likely kill them or have a high likelihood of killing them … eventually enough people begin to understand that.
And the important part is that it’s the truth this time.
Before, they were saying weed would kill people. That got a segment of a generation who would grow up wondering “What else were they lying about?”
The difference this time is that just about everyone now knows someone who either died or was severely affected by opioids. No better way to drive home the truth than by direct examples and demonstrations.
Personally, I know four people who died of drug overdoses, a dozen more in my extended circle of family and friends and two who are living vegetables from overdoses.
I’m willing to bet that you probably know someone yourself.
I know zero people that belong in either of those groups. I’m pretty sure one degree of separation from me also have zero of those people in their friend groups. Anecdotes aren’t evidence.
Agreed. I’ve never known anyone hooked on opioids despite the fact that I know 3 people with astonishing levels of chronic pain. 2 of them have POTS. I was on tons of Vicodin for nearly 3 years though the VA, and then one day they decided to throw a single bottle of muscle relaxers at me and that did the trick. The pain was gone. When I told them I was good and didn’t need the Vicodin anymore, it stopped and I still had like 240 7.5 mg of it left. Which I used for stuff like headaches lol. I was very lucky I never got addicted.
U think any drug addict can afford ozempic even
If you’re not in a shithole Republican state: the ACA allows lots of homeless drug addicts to seek treatment they would otherwise be unable to afford, because they don’t have income or a home, so they qualify for most treatments to be covered. This allows many to fix their lives, although many still do not. Yes, obese meth addicts with heart failure exist.
No we have to throw them in prison and work them for free in a field, that’s the only way…murica.
I hate that this sounds like sarcasm but is in fact, reality.
I know a few physicians who have already been seeing it in their practice.
