Thursday, May 15, 2025
Political Mayhem Thursday: Some Good News
Among everything else, yesterday brought some great news: Overdose deaths in the United States, after rising for years, were down sharply 2024-- a decrease of 27% compared to 2023.
80,391 people still died, which is a tragedy in each case, but at least the trend is finally in the right direction.
It's very hard to know, of course, what accounts for the decrease. I'm fairly certain that some of it was the success of harm reduction efforts, and especially the availability of Narcan to reverse overdoses from opioids (including and especially fentanyl). Encouragingly, the reduction occurred across the country, instead of being localized, suggesting that national trends such as the use of Narcan were a primary driver of the reduction.
All of this makes it important to keep this reduction going. We need the full range or resources to make that happen.
