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.
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.
