On Wednesday, NBC News reported that overdose deaths in America decreased 27 percent last year.
The article reports:
There were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024 than the year before — the largest one-year decline ever recorded.
An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. That’s down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023.
The CDC has been collecting comparable data for 45 years. The previous largest one-year drop was 4% in 2018, according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.
All but two states saw declines last year — with some of the biggest in Ohio, West Virginia and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation’s decades-long overdose epidemic.
Experts say more research needs to be done to understand what drove the reduction, but they mention several possible factors. Among the most cited:
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- Increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.
- Expanded addiction treatment.
- Shifts in how people use drugs.
- The growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money.
- The number of at-risk Americans is shrinking, after waves of deaths in older adults and a shift in teens and younger adults away from the drugs that cause most deaths.
The article notes that drug overdose deaths are still higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The article notes:
Naloxone has become more widely available, in part because of the introduction of over-the-counter versions that don’t require prescriptions.
Meanwhile, drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacy chains and other businesses have settled lawsuits with state and local governments over the painkillers that were a main driver of overdose deaths in the past. The deals over the last decade or so have promised about $50 billion over time, with most of it required to be used to fight addiction.
Hopefully the increased border security under the Trump administration will also help reduce the number of drug overdose deaths.