![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/missouriindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/naloxone-Mississippi.jpg\")
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Sarah Donald of Pearl, Miss., left, who has been in recovery for nine years, receives naloxone nasal spray from an organizer at the state\u2019s Save a Life Day in September. Overdose awareness is continuing to save lives, but overdoses and deaths have spiked in some areas this year (Vickie D. King\/Mississippi Today).<\/p>\n
Illicit drug overdoses and the deaths they cause are trending down this year, despite spikes in a handful of states, according to a Stateline analysis of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n
A handful of places with rising overdoses are responding to the problem with cooperation, they say, by sharing information about overdose surges and distributing emergency medication.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national conversation is just about warships in the Caribbean and drones and borders,\u201d said Nabarun Dasgupta, who studies overdose trends at the University of North Carolina. \u201cIt discounts this huge groundswell of Americans taking care of Americans. There\u2019s a huge amount of caregiving and tending to the needs of local communities that is being done in a non-flashy way because this is hard, slow work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overdose deaths have been dropping steadily since 2023. As of April, the latest date available, deaths were at 76,500 for the previous 12 months \u2014 their lowest level since March 2020. A pandemic spike in overdose deaths drove the number as high as almost 113,000 in the summer of 2023, according to federal statistics.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has\u00a0ordered<\/a>\u00a0more than a dozen military strikes against boats in the open waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean since Sept. 2,\u00a0claiming without publicized evidence that their occupants were drug runners bringing narcotics to the United States. Nearly 60 people have been killed.<\/p>\n The bulk of deadly fentanyl is smuggled over the border with Mexico in passenger cars, according to a September report<\/a> by the federal Government Accountability Office. Chemicals and equipment, mostly from China, are smuggled in via cargo trucks, commercial ships, airplanes and the mail, according to the report.<\/p>\n A more timely indicator of overdoses \u2014 nonfatal suspected overdose patients in hospital emergency departments \u2014 was down 7% this year through August compared with 2024, according to Stateline\u2019s analysis of CDC statistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n The nonfatal overdoses were up for the year in only a few states and the District of Columbia. The largest spikes were 17% in the district, 16% in Rhode Island, 15% in Delaware, 11% in Connecticut and 10% in New Mexico, with smaller increases in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, New Jersey and Minnesota.<\/p>\n Other states saw drops in nonfatal overdoses: Maryland had the largest decrease through August, about 17%.<\/p>\n But Baltimore had an attention-grabbing cluster<\/a> of 42 overdoses between July and October, all within the same neighborhood. No fatalities were reported. The cluster led the city to set aside<\/a> $2 million in October for more mobile services, harm reduction and social supports to fight overdoses.<\/p>\n New Mexico is seeing more overdoses and more deaths<\/a> than the previous year\u00a0in three counties on the Colorado border. In response, New Mexico is distributing both warnings and naloxone, an opioid-overdose antidote.<\/p>\n Officials are giving naloxone to storekeepers near overdose sites and alerting those seeking services about the deadly threat in the local supply.<\/p>\n \u201cWe started planning naloxone saturation and different types of outreaches so we can hopefully stem this from getting even worse,\u201d said David Daniels, harm reduction section manager in the New Mexico health department.<\/p>\n \u201cPutting messaging directly into clients\u2019 hands is extremely valuable. That might be, \u2018If you\u2019re choosing to use, don\u2019t use the regular amount. Maybe you should use a quarter of it. Test it out first,\u2019\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n The three counties in New Mexico \u2014 which include the capital city Santa Fe, ski resort Taos and Espa\u00f1ola, the setting of the 2023 TV black comedy series \u201cThe Curse\u201d\u00a0\u2014 saw about 438 more deaths from July through September than they did during the third quarter of 2024, according to Stateline calculations. That\u2019s more than double the 383 overdose deaths for the area during the same time period last year.<\/p>\n Roger Montoya, a former Democratic state representative who runs an arts nonprofit in Rio Arriba County, said most of the deaths there have been among homeless substance users.<\/p>\n A local hospital has responded with programs to get treatment for more people, and his own Moving Arts Espa\u00f1ola group concentrates on helping children and young people break a cycle of economic despair that often leads to addiction and homelessness, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe try to redirect and strengthen the resiliency of young people who largely are being raised by grandparents and kin because mom and dad are either dead, on the street or incarcerated,\u201d Montoya said.<\/p>\n But most states with overdose increases are still showing fewer deaths, mostly because the drug supply in the eastern United States is more likely to be cut with sedatives that don\u2019t have the same deadly effect as fentanyl, though they can cause overdose.<\/p>\n The drugs linked to Baltimore\u2019s mass overdoses were cut with an unusual, powerful sedative, according to federal testing<\/a>.\u00a0The sedative can cause people to lose consciousness but can\u2019t itself be treated with reversal medication such as naloxone.<\/p>\n By contrast New Mexico\u2019s tests on this year\u2019s clusters generally found more deadly fentanyl than usual in the local supply, said Phillip Fiuty, a technical adviser on adulterant testing in the state health department.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not seeing the type of adulteration they\u2019re experiencing on the East Coast. Once something is in New Mexico, there\u2019s little to no adulteration,\u201d Fiuty said.<\/p>\n Some East Coast states are seeing more overdoses but fewer deaths. Rhode Island warned of spikes in nonfatal overdose in August and September, but deaths through September were still lower than during the same period last year, according to state figures<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not always the case. Connecticut reported<\/a> a surge of both fatal and nonfatal overdoses near interstate highways in May and June.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the factors is change in the illicit drug supply or bad batches. I think that\u2019s what\u2019s playing out now. The drug supply is increasingly unpredictable,\u201d said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.<\/p>\n One of the factors is change in the illicit drug supply or bad batches. \u2026 The drug supply is increasingly unpredictable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2013 Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The association has a suggested framework<\/a> for community response to spikes, but cities and counties may be hampered by a new aggressiveness on enforcement and more hostility to local efforts to stop deaths, she said.<\/p>\n The current Trump administration has shown some reluctance to support community harm reduction techniques, she said. That includes the temporary suspension of $140 million in funds for a program called Overdose Data to Action, known as OD2A,\u00a0that the first Trump administration started to sound the alarm when spikes happen.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven recent cuts to health care and substance use and overdose prevention services that we\u2019re seeing, that is impacting some of the work on the ground,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cIt\u2019s pushing people away from being able to make the changes they need to make to change their lives. It has the potential to create more of an overdose problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at\u00a0thenderson@stateline.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n