A Closer Look at Overdose Deaths
Bubba
20 Sep
The sharp and sudden drop in U.S. overdose deaths might not mean the drug crisis has peaked. (The Causal Fallacy)
The latest: Preliminary CDC data shows a 10.6% decline in drug overdose deaths between April 2023 to April 2024.
According to some researchers, the decrease could mean an estimated 20,000 lives saved each year.
Public health experts told NPR the huge spikes in drug deaths that started in 2019 may have finally come to an end.
Others said, “a widespread, meaningful shift appears underway.”
Why: Experts say the rapid decline in drug overdose deaths is largely unexplained for now, though factors like increased availability of naloxone (an emergency medicine for overdoses) and addiction treatments may have contributed.
Police crackdowns on fentanyl suppliers and changes in the drug supply, including the mixing of xylazine, may also be reducing fatal doses.
Counter-narrative: In a new essay, Manhattan Institute fellow Charles Fain Lehman argues the drop in drug overdoses may simply be a reversion to the long-term trend, not a token of successful policies or a sign OD deaths will stop decreasing.
Chart: The Causal Fallacy
Lehman:
What appears to have happened in 2020 is a large and sustained surge in deaths—a big increase in the rate at which people drop out of the pool. But, to put it in somewhat morbid terms, if a person died in 2020/21, he wasn’t “available” to die in 2023/24. A big burst in drug ODs, caused by some exogenous shock, should be followed by a return to the baseline rate, simply by virtue of this dynamic. What this implies, moreover, is that the decline we’re seeing is “paid for” by deaths we saw earlier—many of those people who “should be” dying now are already dead. And we’re trending back towards the baseline—which is, of course, a long-run exponential increase.