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.
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…
are these homeless addicts ABUSING THE POOR DRUGS or are they human beings struggling to survive in a capitalist hellscape?
I tried to feel bad for these abused drugs but i can’t stop thinking about the people!
Drug abuse is in regards to people use drugs in an unhealthy manner, i.e. addiction. You can abuse alcohol as well.
Stop acting like saying ‘abusing drugs is a problem’, is an insult towards people. It’s so performative and useless in helping anybody who has ever had issues with substance abuse.
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
Better than nothing, since dead people can’t seek help. It’s always best to fight the source of the problem, but until that’s achieved you should fight the symptoms. The only 2 downsides ich can think about is that a solution for symptoms can make people more reckless and some people might fear the cost. But neither should be a consideration compared to the life of someone.
Fear the cost? It’s pretty cheap. Problem with fentanyl is that you can’t really stop the supply. You can make it from way too many different things and the dosage is so potent you just need a tiny amount. It’s not like meth where you can control one ingredient and it will cut off a ton of supply.
While that does definitely have an effect, I think the population more affected by that is not the population who are at risk of actually overdosing.
Maybe initially. But long term, if people get into weed through a legal market, they have no reason to engage in the black market, which provides access to lots of other drugs you can OD on.
Sure.
No other reason thatn… well, pretty much the exact same reasons there are now. I mean, yeah, it’s not nothing that people who sell weed sometimes also deal other substances, but the people introduced to a new substance at their dealers is more a D.A.R.E: thing than what tends to happen in real life.
Legalising weed won’t get rid of the use of other substances. We will have to reform the drug laws on all substances.
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.
This right here.
The only problem is that it’s not free. Might be great for the occasional opiate user or someone whose worried about their molly being tainted with fent…but addicts gonna addict. Money spent on narcan is money not spent on their next fix.
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.
why would you buy weed off the street instead of from the friendly and incredibly stoned budtender in the basement of a strip mall
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.
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.
