United States: The number of people dying from drug overdoses is still going up in Oregon and a few other western states, even though it has gone down in most other places in the country, according to new government information.
Preliminary data regarding the year ending in April 2024 revealed that overdose deaths added up to 22% across Oregon. That is the second highest rate of increase in the country — at the same time as overdose deaths declined by 10% across the United States.
In other words, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data provide the nation with positive news after years of continually increasing drug overdose mortality rates. This is not the case in Oregon.
According to the opb.org, the statistics are worse and much more complex. Oregon state legislators canceled most people’s favorite societal grand experiment in September, and the new figures will likely only add fuel to the already continuing argument over the sane decision to repeal Measure 110’s decriminalization.
Alaska saw a 42% increase in fatal overdoses in the same 12-month period. In contrast, in five western states, the increases were less than in Oregon: Nevada with 18%, Washington with 14%, Utah with 8%, Colorado with 4% and Wyoming with 2%.
The only two states east of the Rockies showing an improvement were Iowa and the District of Columbia, which both increased by 1%. There was no change in Montana, with overdoses in other states ranging from 1% to 30% lower.
So what’s happening? People have varying interpretations regarding the meaning of the numbers, but everyone knows that fentanyl’s presence is a problem.
Fentanyl smuggled into the United States from China was prominent in the drug market east of the Mississippi River, with overdose deaths from synthetic opioids rising tenfold between 2013 and 2018, and it was feared to be moving west.
According to the authorities, in 2019, fentanyl began to spread towards the WEST and such states as Washington and Oregon and other states in the region. Closely with that came what has been described as the ‘fourth wave’ of opioid overdose deaths in the West, attributed to fearsome new fentanyl hybrids that cartels cut into other drugs to ramp up demand and comorbid dependence.
The rises in the West gave rise to an interpretation that fentanyl had ‘nowhere else to go,’ said Ju Nyeong Park, an epidemiologist and an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.
According to the Lund Report and now she added, “the shock of that increase in that fentanyl supply has reached every part of the country.”
Park said it’s basically not clear if the drop in the fatal overdoses nationally will continue after the years of devastation from the fentanyl.
The federal government has increased spending on testing strips, overdoses-reversal medication, methadone, and other measures meant to reduce the harm from using illicit drugs, she noted. Oregon is also seeking to make naloxone an opioid-overdose reversal medication was also available.