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U.S. drug deaths plunged in 2024. Trump cuts may reverse that, experts warn.

U.S. drug deaths plunged in 2024. Trump cuts may reverse that, experts warn.

Washington Post14-05-2025

U.S. drug deaths plunged in 2024, according to federal data published Wednesday, offering hope that public health measures are paying off even as the toll remains high.
Though there doesn't seem to be a single variable to attribute to the gains, the drop in overdose deaths comes amid concerns that cuts to federal public health agencies and proposals to cut Medicaid could undercut progress.
An estimated 80,391 people died from drugs in 2024, a decrease of nearly 27 percent from the previous year, according to provisional state data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths from synthetic opioids — chiefly fentanyl, which has fueled the overdose crisis during the past decade — played a role in the majority of drug deaths but tumbled by nearly 28,000 fatalities, the estimates show.
The progress comes after drug deaths, which had been rising for more than a decade, soared to staggering levels during the coronavirus pandemic, surpassing 100,000 each year starting in 2021.
'I would characterize this as a historically significant decrease in overdose deaths,' said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University School of Public Health epidemiologist who studies overdose trends. 'We're really seeing decreases almost across the entire nation at this point.'
The data published Wednesday charts a dramatic decline in deaths during then-President Joe Biden's final year in office. The Trump administration has espoused hard-line rhetoric on fentanyl, declaring traffickers a top national security threat and citing them as a key reason for launching trade battles with China and allies Canada and Mexico.
The administration has also touted large fentanyl seizures and asked Mexico to allow the U.S. military to conduct counternarcotics operations on Mexican soil, a request denied by that country's president.
The CDC, in a statement, noted that Trump during his first administration declared the opioid crisis a public-health emergency in 2017. The declines since 2023 are a 'strong sign that public health interventions are making a difference and having a meaningful impact,' the agency said. 'Despite these overall improvements, overdose remains the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-44, underscoring the need for ongoing efforts to maintain this progress.'
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, in an April statement of policy priorities, emphasized curbing the flow of illicit fentanyl, along with expanding access to treatment and research into cutting-edge technologies to identify and address emerging drug threats.
But public health advocates are raising alarm that the Trump administration is undercutting those goals with plans to gut federal funding that helps states pay for overdose antidotes, addiction treatment and other measures. A survey conducted by the nonprofit research firm Rand published in May suggests that more people may be using illicit opioids than previously estimated, underscoring the need for better monitoring.
In a letter to Congress on Monday, more than 300 academics warned that the Trump administration's proposed cuts to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and CDC could 'undermine the hard-fought progress we have made, especially in overdose prevention.'
Experts also worry Republican plans to slash Medicaid could leave former drug users without access to medication, forcing them to turn to street drugs, said Chad Sabora, a drug policy expert who helped organize the letter. 'It will equal more people dying,' he said.
The opioid crisis began decades ago with highly addictive prescription pain killers flooding states. Users later turned to cheaper street heroin, which was largely replaced by fentanyl manufactured by Mexican organized crime groups with precursor chemicals sourced from China. The synthetic drug can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin.
No single reason explains the sudden drop in deaths, researchers and health officials stress.
The Biden administration credited seizures of fentanyl at the southern border, arrests of high-level Mexican drug traffickers and cooperation from Beijing to crack down on unscrupulous Chinese companies exporting precursor chemicals. The administration also expanded access to addiction treatment medications such as buprenorphine, which wards off opioid withdrawals, and the overdose reversal drug naloxone. It also embraced harm reduction organizations that have saturated communities with free naloxone, fentanyl test strips and sterile needles to users.
Fewer deaths 'don't just happen overnight. And that's why we can credit them to the Biden administration's work,' said Sheila P. Vakharia, deputy director of research and academic engagement for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance.
Experts also believe that the illicit drug supply, at least in some regions, may be shifting to include less fentanyl. Other drugs added to fentanyl — such as the tranquilizer xylazine — may prolong the sedating effect and stave off opioid withdrawal so that users consume less fentanyl each day, researchers theorize.
Declines in deaths may also reflect the grim reality that fentanyl has killed so many regular users that there are fewer people at risk of overdose. The trajectory of deaths 'can't keep going up. It has essentially to kind of burn itself out,' said Caleb Banta-Green, an addiction expert and drug researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
During Biden's first three years, the death toll topped 100,000 each year.
Deaths during a 12-month period peaked in June 2023 at a staggering 114,670, making the rapid drop nationally all the more remarkable, said Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He stressed that deaths had been falling in certain regions where fentanyl had been entrenched for longer.
'Americans have responded to the overdose crisis with powerful community efforts, from every small town to large city. What we are seeing is the fruit of all that collective labor. These local efforts are the heart of overdose prevention,' Dasgupta said.
The CDC data released on Wednesday is not definitive; final death statistics lag because toxicology testing often takes months to complete.
Deaths involving stimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine — which users increasingly take alongside fentanyl — also decreased, the statistics show.
Two states, Nevada and South Dakota notched slight increases from the previous year. But nearly all states showed declines in 2024. States such as New Hampshire, West Virginia and Ohio recorded declines of 35 percent or more.
In Washington state, where fentanyl became entrenched years later than on the East Coast, suspected drug deaths dropped by nearly 12 percent, after years of increases, for a total of 3,167.
In King County, home to Seattle, health officials distributed 124,700 naloxone kits in 2024 and opened three vending machines for people to obtain the medication, fentanyl test strips and other supplies. County officials and the University of Washington Department of Emergency Medicine also debuted a hotline for doctors to prescribe buprenorphine through free telehealth sessions at any time of day. The city's mayor in August announced an investment of nearly $3 million in opioid litigation settlement money to increase capacity for inpatient treatment.
But the state health department's top medical officer, Tao Kwan-Gett, urged cautioned. Washington overdose deaths fell through much of 2024 but spiked during the final four months of the year.
'It's too early to say that we're seeing a sustained decrease,' Kwan-Gett said. 'I certainly hope we are, but I think we have to continue being vigilant.'
The encouraging statistics in Washington and nationwide belie the heartbreak of addiction — and death.
Among the victims nationwide in 2024: a 17-month-old Los Angeles boy who ingested fentanyl during a child welfare-monitored visit with his mother; a 15-year-old girl who fatally overdosed on fentanyl at her Georgia high school, nine people who fatally overdosed in Austin, during one day.
In Seattle, former movie set designer Wade Paradise battled an opioid addiction for years after taking prescription pain killers. He was largely estranged from his family, living in squalor and suffering from myriad ailments, according to his daughter, Nathalie Paradise, 24.
She said Wade Paradise had struggled to get addiction treatment because of problems with health insurance. In December, he died at age 68 in his home from a pill made of fentanyl. His death received little attention but for Nathalie's GoFundMe page in which she recalled cherished childhood memories of summer swims in a lake and bargain hunting at thrift stores — and detailed his addiction.
'I didn't want it to be a secret anymore. I felt like the people in his life deserved to know the truth,' she said in an interview. 'I also have a lot of friends who use drugs, and I hoped that by sharing my story, it might encourage them to stop.'

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From heartbreak to hope; suicide loss survivor says 'You are not alone'
From heartbreak to hope; suicide loss survivor says 'You are not alone'

Yahoo

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  • Yahoo

From heartbreak to hope; suicide loss survivor says 'You are not alone'

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Their journey led them to Team of Mercy, a nonprofit based in Terre Haute that helps those left behind after losing a loved one to suicide. Snow angels made to honor life of Sullivan High School student 'We went to our first meeting in Terre Haute and have been going ever since for the last five years, every month,' he said. The couple now leads Team of Mercy's monthly survivor support group in Sullivan. 'It's just a place we can connect with others in Sullivan who are going through the same thing we are,' Mike said. 'Being around people who have experienced what you've gone through and what you've lost is very, very important because then you realize that you aren't alone, that you are sharing this with other people,' Rebecca said. 'I honestly feel if we didn't have Team of Mercy helping us through all of this, I'm not so sure we would get out of bed some days,' she added. Christina Crist knows that pain all too well. She lost her daughter Hannah to suicide in 2013 and became one of the driving forces behind Team of Mercy. 'Hannah, at the time of her death, was 15 years old, a sophomore at South High School. It had rocked our community's world to know that a 15-year-old, let alone thought about suicide, but actually took her life,' Christna said. Christina described Hannah as tears filled her eyes, 'A fun-loving kid. Charismatic, loving, caring,' she said. 'Kids described her as someone who, if they would be having a bad day and Hannah would notice that and do whatever she could to make sure they were going to have a better day.' A decade later, Christina's grief hasn't faded — but it has evolved. And through her pain, she's found a purpose. 'You will never ever, ever get over this,' Christina said. 'You're not supposed to. But what we learn to do is live in it. We learn to thrive in it, we learn to go on, we figure out how to still hold a piece of our loved ones.' 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As the white smoke from the burnout rises across the cemetery and over Cade's gravestone, so does Mike's message, 'You are not alone.' If you've lost a loved one to suicide, Team of Mercy wants you to know that you don't have to walk that journey alone. Mike and Rebecca host the Suicide Loss Support Group in Sullivan on the third Monday of each month from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. at Abundant Grace Church. It's located at 671 W Wolfe St., behind Walmart in Sullivan. The next meeting is happening on Monday, June 16. For more information on Team of Mercy, click here. If you are experiencing mental health-related distress or are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by clicking here. You can also text or call the hotline by dialing 988. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The True Beginning of America's Anti-Vaccine Era
The True Beginning of America's Anti-Vaccine Era

Atlantic

timean hour ago

  • Atlantic

The True Beginning of America's Anti-Vaccine Era

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accepted his new position as health secretary, he made a big show of distancing himself from his past life. 'News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry,' Kennedy, who has for decades promoted the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism and has baselessly sown doubt over the ability of the U.S. government to vet shots, said at his confirmation hearing in January. 'I am neither. I am pro-safety.' But for all Kennedy's talk, this week he did exactly what a person would do if they were trying to undermine the scientific consensus on vaccination in the United States. He abruptly dismissed the entire expert committee that advises the CDC on its nationwide vaccine recommendations—and began to fill the roster with like-minded people ready to cast doubt on the benefits of vaccination. Like Kennedy, few of these new appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, or ACIP, have openly embraced the notion that they are anti-vaccine. But among them are individuals who have spoken out against COVID vaccines and policies, claimed vaccine injuries for their own children, and falsely linked COVID shots to deaths—or even baselessly accused those vaccines of ' causing a form of acquired immunity deficiency syndrome.' In January, I wrote that remaking the committee in exactly this way would be an especially harmful blow to Americans' health: Perhaps more than any other body of experts in the U.S., ACIP guides the nation's future preparedness against infectious disease. By appointing a committee that is poised to legitimize more of his own radical views, Kennedy is giving his skewed version of scientific reality the government's imprimatur. Whether he will admit to it or not, he is serving the most core goal of the anti-vaccine movement—eroding access to, and trust in, immunization. In an emailed statement, Health and Human Services Press Secretary Emily G. Hilliard reiterated that 'Secretary Kennedy is not anti-vaccine—he is pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability,' and added that his 'evidence-based approach puts accountability and radical transparency first, which will restore trust in our public health system.' (Kennedy, notably, promised Senator Bill Cassidy during his confirmation process that he would maintain ACIP, as Cassidy put it, 'without changes.') Since the 1960s, ACIP has lent government policy on vaccines the clout of scientific evidence. Its mandate is to convene experts across fields such as infectious disease, immunology, pediatrics, vaccinology, and public health to carefully vet the data on immunizations, weigh their risks and benefits, and vote on recommendations that guide the public on how to use them—who should get vaccines, and when. Those guidelines are then passed to the CDC director, who—with only the rarest of exceptions—accepts that advice wholesale. 'These recommendations are what states look to, what providers look to,' Rupali Limaye, an expert in vaccine behavior at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me. Medicare, for instance, is required to fully cover the vaccines that ACIP recommends; ACIP also determines which vaccines are covered by the Vaccines for Children Program, which provides free vaccines for children whose families cannot afford them. The experts who serve on ACIP have the opportunity, more than just about any of their scientific peers, to translate their vaccine rhetoric into reality. So far, Kennedy has dismissed the 17 people who were serving on ACIP, and filled eight of the newly open slots. Most of the new nominees have an obvious bone to pick with at least some vaccines, especially COVID shots, and have publicly advocated for limiting their use. Among the new members, for instance, is Robert Malone, a controversial physician who has spoken at anti-vaccine events, where he has denounced COVID vaccines and, without evidence, suggested that they can worsen coronavirus infections. Another appointee is Vicky Pebsworth, who serves on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, an anti-vaccine nonprofit previously known as Dissatisfied Parents Together. A third, Retsef Levi, a health-care-management expert, called for the administration of COVID vaccines to be halted in 2023, and has questioned the shots' safety, despite a large body of evidence from clinical trials supporting their continued use. Overall, 'this is not a list that would increase confidence in vaccine decisions,' Dorit Reiss, a vaccine-policy expert at UC San Francisco, told me. (None of these new ACIP members returned a request for comment.) The next ACIP meeting is scheduled for the end of this month—and the agenda includes discussion about anthrax vaccines, chikungunya vaccines, COVID-19 vaccines, cytomegalovirus vaccine, human-papillomavirus vaccine, influenza vaccines, Lyme-disease vaccine, meningococcal vaccines, pneumococcal vaccines, and RSV vaccines. That's a big slate of topics for a brand-new panel of members, Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert who has previously served on ACIP, told me: Depending on how the meeting is structured, and on the input from CDC scientists, these new committee members could substantially alter the guidelines on several immunizations—perhaps so much so that certain shots could stop being recommended to certain groups of Americans. Based on the composition of the committee so far, Offit predicts that eventually the new ACIP will push the CDC away from full-throated endorsement of many of these vaccines. Even subtle changes in the wording of CDC recommendations—a should swapped for a may —can have big ripple effects, Limaye told me. Insurers, for instance, may be more reluctant to cover vaccines that are not actively endorsed by the CDC; some states—especially those in which vaccines have become a political battleground—may stop mandating those types of shots. If the CDC softens its recommendations, 'we will likely see more partisan divides' in who opts for protection nationwide, Jason Schwartz, a vaccine-policy expert at Yale, told me. Pharmaceutical companies may, in turn, cut down production of vaccines that don't have full CDC backing—perpetuating a cycle of reduced availability and reduced enthusiasm. And primary-care physicians, who look to the CDC's vaccination schedule as an essential reference, may shift the language they use to describe childhood shots, nudging more parents to simply opt out. Historically, medical and public-health associations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, have aligned their vaccine recommendations with ACIP's—because those recommendations were all driven by scientific evidence. Now, though, scientific consensus and government position are beginning to diverge: Multiple groups of physicians, scientists, and public-health scholars have issued statements condemning the vaccine decisions of Kennedy and his allies; a number of prominent scientists have now banded together to form a kind of alt-ACIP, dubbing themselves the Vaccine Integrity Project. As the views of fringe vaccine groups become the government's stance, Americans may soon have to choose between following the science or following what their nation's leaders say. Identifying as 'anti-vaccine' has historically been taboo: In a nation where most people remain largely in favor of shots, the term is pejorative, an open acknowledgement that one's views lie outside of the norm. But the more vaccine resistance infiltrates HHS and its advisers, the more what's considered normal may shift towards Kennedy's own views on vaccines; ACIP's reputation for evidence-backed thinking could even gild those views with scientific legitimacy. Assembling one's own team of friendly experts is an especially effective way to sanewash extremism, Reiss told me, and to overturn the system through what appear to be normal channels. If the nation's most prominent group of vaccine advisers bends toward anti-vaccine, the term loses its extremist edge—and the scientists who argue, based on sound data, that vaccines are safe and effective risk being labeled anti-government.

Louisiana's 2025 legislative session ends with governor saying he plans to call a special session
Louisiana's 2025 legislative session ends with governor saying he plans to call a special session

Associated Press

timean hour ago

  • Associated Press

Louisiana's 2025 legislative session ends with governor saying he plans to call a special session

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — With just minutes to spare, Louisiana lawmakers concluded the 2025 legislative session on Thursday — but, per usual, it ended with a bang. Before lawmakers could even walk out the Capitol doors, Gov. Jeff Landry said he planned to call a special session in the future, with the hopes of reviving controversial legislation that died Thursday. It is unclear when exactly lawmakers would be asked to return. Last-minute amendments to bill, which would prohibit companies from owning both pharmacy benefits managers and drugstores, caused a frenzy in the final days of session — complete with fiery testimony from lawmakers, a massive lobbying campaign to block the measure by retail giant CVS and promises of legal action by the Attorney General. Also in the final hours of session lawmakers approved the state's $51 billion budget. 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