When Nabarun Dasgupta, a leading drug expert at the University of North Carolina, saw the numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in May, he was shocked. “skeptical”. The latter announced, for the first time since 2018, a 3% decrease in the number of overdose deaths in the United States in 2023, compared to the previous year. As the months passed, he had to face the facts: the trend continued and even intensified. According to the latest CDC data, released in November, a 14.5% drop is now expected nationwide between June 2023 and June 2024, with 96,801 overdose deaths, down from 113,154 the previous year.
For more than twenty years, the opioid crisis has wreaked havoc across the Atlantic. It was first driven by the explosion of prescription painkillers like oxycodone, then by the rise of heroin, and finally by the rise of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, a hundred times more potent than morphine. Death from fentanyl overdose now leading cause Mortality among Americans ages 18 to 45.
The Covid-19 pandemic has only made things worse. In 2021, the number of overdose deaths exceeded 100,000 nationally for the first time, and then 110,000 in 2022, a record. “When we see a double-digit drop like this, it shows that this is not just a statistical aberration.”confirms Allison Arwady, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, a branch of the CDC.
The drop is more pronounced in the east of the country (North Carolina recorded a decrease of around 30%), while in the west the situation contrasts more, with five states having increasing numbers. This is explained, explains Allison Arwady, by the fact that the east coast was the first affected by the arrival of fentanyl and, therefore, the first to have to react before the phenomenon moved westward.
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What is the reason for this recent and marked decline? Has access to treatment for opioid addiction improved? Is the fight against cartels more effective? More massive funding? Yes, responds the White House, for which this decline is the result of the policy followed by outgoing president Joe Biden for four years. In an extensive blog post published in September, Nabarun Dasgupta reviewed the various arguments put forward by the scientific community, which has difficulty explaining this decline. “There is no single answer”write before recognizing that “We may never know what caused this decline or if it will last”. “It is difficult, at a national policy level, to see what works, but, on the ground, it is obvious that each community [administrations, associations, travailleurs sociaux, médecins qui œuvrent ensemble] has a different path towards success and that it is the collective effort that works”confess.
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