Overdoses

Experts Credit Harm Reduction For 27% Drop In Overdose Deaths

May 16, 2025 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. Strategize! CDC, Drug use, Drugs, Harm Reduction, Overdoses

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on May 14 that the number of drug overdose deaths in the United States dropped by nearly 27 percent in 2024. The number represents a significant decrease after more than a decade of steeply climbing drug-related fatality rates that billions of dollars in federal spending on policing and border enforcement failed to contain. At the beginning of 2015, the CDC reported fewer than 50,000 overdose deaths annually. By 2021, that number had surpassed 100,000 before peaking at 111,451 during the summer of 2023. The CDC found massive racial disparities in the data, with the number of deaths recorded between 2019 and 2020 falling among white populations with better access to public health interventions while skyrocketing in Black and Indigenous communities where heavy policing trumped health care, for example.

Inside America’s First Official Safe Drug Consumption Site

January 1, 2025 Rebecca L. Root, Next City. Create! Harm Reduction, Opioid crisis, Overdoses, Safe Consumption Sites

At 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, most of the soft recliners in the waiting area of the three-story East Harlem overdose prevention center (OPC) are already occupied by those who have come to consume their first dose of the day. Whether it’s for fentanyl, heroin, or another drug, people of all ages trickle into the consumption room at OnPoint NYC, where mirrored cubicles line opposite sides of the room and a staff station sits in the middle with trays of needles, elastics, and wipes organized in rows. A man, who looks to be in his late 30s, unwraps today’s first fix of what most likely is the opioid fentanyl, which staff say is the most common drug used here.

New Study Finds Police Drug Seizures Increase The Risk Of Overdose

August 6, 2023 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Educate! Drug War, Health Care, Overdoses, Police

A recent study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the American Journal of Public Health, focused on two years of opioid and stimulant seizure data from the Indianapolis police. The researchers examined how these seizures impacted fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the areas where the seizures took place within specific time frames. The results found fatal overdoses doubled in the week following an opioid seizure within approximately 500 meters of the seizure location. Additionally, the distribution of naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug, by paramedics doubled in the two weeks following an opioid-related drug seizure within the same radius.

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