“It looks like 2019 is the new record for drug overdose deaths,” said Bob Anderson, chief mortality officer at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. “The data is still provisional right now, but the increase in the final months of 2019 was strong enough to take it to the top in just over two hundred deaths.”
Trump campaigned to end the opioid crisis and, along with Congress, invested more than $ 21 billion in the effort over the past four years, according to figures provided by the US Office of National Drug Control Policy. White House. Trump during this year’s State of the Union address touted a 4.6 percent drop in overdose deaths in 2018, which was the first decline in fatal overdoses in nearly 30 years.
“With unwavering commitment, we are curbing the opioid epidemic,” Trump declared in early February.
The overdose data may still be slightly adjusted when finalized later this year. But experts say progress in 2018 was short-lived as the epidemic shifts to more powerful opioids and deaths from other drugs are on the rise.
“It was premature to declare victory in 2018,” said Chuck Ingoglia, president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health, a trade association for addiction treatment and mental health providers. “We still don’t have enough capacity to reach the people who need it. Even with the new investments, we still don’t have enough funds. “
A year after administration officials gave an optimistic but cautious tone that the tide was beginning to trigger the deadly drug epidemic, they warned Wednesday that a tough fight was looming.
“We understand that there is an extraordinary amount of work to be done, especially now that we are also dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic that could significantly affect our nation’s mental and psychological health and the risk of substance use,” said the Under Secretary for Cheers Brett Giroir in a statement.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said the new data is “an important reminder that the next crisis is not over and is continuing to evolve.”
Anderson CDC expert said last year’s increase It was largely powered by synthetic opioids like illicit fentanyl, although deaths from methamphetamine and cocaine have increased.
“A substantial part of those are combination drugs, where fentanyl is being mixed with methamphetamine or cocaine,” he said.
Dan Barden, vice president of clinical services for CODAC Health, Recovery and Wellness, based in Tucson, Arizona, observed a dramatic increase in illicit synthetic opioids like fentanyl. His state experienced a nearly 14 percent increase in overdose deaths in 2019, according to CDC data.
“Part is homemade fentanyl,” said Barden. “We are finding it in everything, pressed into pills to look like Xanax. It has been mixed with marijuana and added to prescription opioids.”
Addiction experts say the federal focus on opioids has been too limited and should extend more broadly to all substances, including alcohol.
“We lobbied a lot with our congressman to tell them to remove the word ‘opioid’ from any bill they are submitting,” said Lenette Kosovich, executive director of the Rimrock Foundation, an addiction treatment center in Billings, Mont. “Focusing on the word ‘opioid’ did us no favors here in the West and Midwest.”
CDC data from 2018 and 2019 showed a significant increase in methamphetamine-related deaths largely in the country’s regions, while opioid-related deaths continued to be more frequent in the Northeast. Montana saw a 19 percent increase in drug overdose deaths last year, according to CDC data.
