Opioid overdose death have now slowed to the lowest levels nationwide since 2020, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the 12th consecutive month of decline since a peak last year.
About 70,655 deaths linked to opioids like heroin and fentanyl were reported for the year ending June 2024, the CDC now estimates, down 18% from the same period in 2023.
Nearly all states except a handful in the West, from Alaska to Nevada, are now seeing significant declines in overdose death rates. Early data from Canada also suggests overdose deaths may also be slowing from the 2023 peak.
“While these data provide cause for optimism, we must not lose sight of the fact that an estimated 100,000 people die from drug overdoses in the United States each year,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. in a statement.
Other types of drug overdoses, other than opioids, are also slowing. Although they represent a smaller share of total deaths, overdoses linked to drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine are also showing signs of declining nationally after peaking last year.
“We’re encouraged by this data, but damn, it’s time to double down on the things we know work. Now is not the time to back down, and I’m very convinced, and our data show, that the threat continues to evolve,” Dr. Allison Arwady, director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told CBS News.
Arwady pointed to a long list of factors that officials hope are contributing to the decline, ranging from greater availability of the overdose reversal spray naloxone, also known as Narcanefforts to address gaps in access to medications that can treat opioid use disorder.
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Trends in what health officials call “primary prevention” have also improved in recent years, meaning fewer people are using these medications. As an example, Arwady cited CDC surveys showing a sharp decline in the number of high school students reporting trying illegal drugs.
The CDC and health departments have also accelerated data collection and analysis to respond to increases in overdoses, Arwady said, often caused by new so-called “adulterants” mixed in. Health authorities are investigating this by testing blood and drug samples taken. following flare-ups, looking for potential emerging drug-related threats.
Agency researchers are now taking a closer look at what might be driving the gaps in communities that are still not experiencing a slowdown, Arwady said.
“Unfortunately, for the most affected groups, namely Native Americans and Black American men, mortality rates are not decreasing and are at the highest levels on record,” Volkow said.
Why are drug overdose deaths decreasing?
In the months since CDC data began showing real signs of a nationwide shift in the record-breaking deadly wave of opioid overdose deaths, experts have floated a number of theories for explain what caused this change.
“We saw the numbers going down, nationally overall, since last April, and we were skeptical and kind of keeping our silence. Then we started hearing from a lot of people on the ground, front-line providers,” said Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies opioid overdose deaths.
Dasgupta led a September analysis by the university’s Opioid Data Lab, illustrating the national scale of the economic downturn and probing a number of theories that might explain it.
Some explanations were considered improbable, such as the intensification of law enforcement operations. Other ideas they considered plausible, but difficult to prove, such as so-called “susceptible exhaustion” – essentially the epidemic died out on its own, with users either finding ways to survive the fentanyl surge or died – or the wider availability of naloxone.
Dasgupta said he’s received a flood of interest since his initial post proposing more theories, like new scanners being deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.
There are likely a number of factors all playing a role in this change, Dasgupta says. But he said early data from ongoing research now supports a major explanation: a change in the supply of illegal drugs.
“Our hypothesis is that something has changed in the drug supply. This kind of pronounced change, something that happens suddenly, if the numbers had suddenly increased, we would certainly point to a change in the drug supply for explain it,” Dasgupta said. .
Amidst its disadvantages, xylazineThe increase in injection drug use could have led to a decrease in injection drug use, they speculate. Its longer effect could also reduce the number of times people use fentanyl each day.
“We’re not in our offices celebrating. We’re still losing too many people we love. So I want to make it very clear that with about a hundred thousand people still dying, that’s an obscene number.” , he declared.
