258

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago

If you tell people that if they do a certain thing that it will most likely kill them or have a high likelihood of killing them ... eventually enough people begin to understand that.

And the important part is that it's the truth this time.

Before, they were saying weed would kill people. That got a segment of a generation who would grow up wondering "What else were they lying about?"

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 3 points 13 hours ago

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".

[-] tyler@programming.dev 8 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] P00ptart@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

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.

this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
258 points (99.6% liked)

News

23190 readers
2907 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS