Experts are watching in disbelief as drug overdose deaths in the US are suddenly starting to drop, bucking a long and tragic rise.
As NPR reports, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found reported drug overdose deaths plummeted by over 12 percent between April 2023 and April 2024 in the US. In Ohio alone — a state with among the highest drug death rates in the country — overdose deaths are down a stunning 31 percent so far this year.
"In the states that have the most rapid data collection systems, we’re seeing declines of twenty percent, thirty percent," University of North Carolina street drugs expert Nabarun Dasgupta told NPR.
The drop is a triumph, because overdose deaths in the US have steadily rising for decades. And despite the most recent drop-off, around 100,000 people are still dying per year — a numbing tragedy that has experts warning we shouldn't get too optimistic just yet.
There's also the issue that researchers are struggling to explain what's behind the decline.
Could it be the expanded distribution of life-saving drugs like naloxene, a fast-acting treatment that reserves the effects of opioid overdoses? Last year alone, 22 million doses of naloxene were distributed across the US and Canada. Fentanyl test strips are equally becoming more common, allowing users to figure out what's actually in the drugs they buy to manage risk.
Another grim possible explanation: relentless drug overdoses have hollowed out the population of active users, meaning there are fewer people taking the drugs and putting themselves in harm's way.
The proliferation of the powerful synthetic painkiller fentanyl has had a grim effect on drug deaths, with overdoses skyrocketing over the last five years. Between January 2020 and January 2021, overdose deaths involving opioids rose a stunning 38.1 percent.
Of course, that makes the most recent precipitous drop all the more surprising.
"We don't have anything that would predict this magnitude of effect this quickly," Dasgupta told NPR.
It's possible that it's just a blip, and that overdose deaths will level off or start to rise again. But some optimistic experts are hoping.
"This is where we're all going to differ," University of California San Francisco addiction researcher Daniel Ciccarone told NPR. "Everyone is going to come out and claim that what they did is what caused the decline."
Nonetheless, experts are taking the latest news as a hopeful sign.
"It absolutely seems things are going in the right direction, and it's something we should feel pleased about," University of Missouri St. Louis director of addiction science Rachel Winograd told NPR.
More on fentanyl: Oregon Forced to Recriminalize Drugs After Disastrous Decriminalization Experiment
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