There were 30,000 fewer US 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 Nevada and South Dakota experiencing small increases. Some of the biggest drops were in Ohio, West Virginia, and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation's decades-long overdose epidemic, the AP reports.
Experts say more research needs to be done to understand what drove the reduction, but they mention several possible factors. Among the most cited:
- 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.
Still, annual overdose deaths are higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, the CDC noted that overdoses are still the leading cause of death for people 18-44 years old, "underscoring the need for ongoing efforts to maintain this progress." Some experts worry that the recent decline could be slowed or stopped by reductions in federal funding and the public health workforce, or a shift away from the strategies that seem to be working. "Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal," says Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a drug policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
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