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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.
The difference this time is that just about everyone now knows someone who either died or was severely affected by opioids. No better way to drive home the truth than by direct examples and demonstrations.
Personally, I know four people who died of drug overdoses, a dozen more in my extended circle of family and friends and two who are living vegetables from overdoses.
I’m willing to bet that you probably know someone yourself.
I know zero people that belong in either of those groups. I’m pretty sure one degree of separation from me also have zero of those people in their friend groups. Anecdotes aren’t evidence.
Agreed. I’ve never known anyone hooked on opioids despite the fact that I know 3 people with astonishing levels of chronic pain. 2 of them have POTS. I was on tons of Vicodin for nearly 3 years though the VA, and then one day they decided to throw a single bottle of muscle relaxers at me and that did the trick. The pain was gone. When I told them I was good and didn’t need the Vicodin anymore, it stopped and I still had like 240 7.5 mg of it left. Which I used for stuff like headaches lol. I was very lucky I never got addicted.
Yeah, it went from “Any illegal drug will kill you or drive you insane”, to “All that anti-drug stuff is nonsense, they aren’t THAT bad” to finally, a much more nuanced “Some drugs should definitely not be fucked with”.