The death toll from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids is falling for the first time since the drugs began flooding the streets a decade ago. Users and police in Columbus, Ohio's beaten-down Hilltop neighborhood credit another drug flooding the U.S.: the overdose antidote naloxone. James “Sleaze” Morgan says naloxone has saved him after overdosing as many as 20 times in the last several years, Reuters reports. The lifesaving nasal-spray medicine is everywhere in the 10 or more Hilltop “trap” houses where users come to buy and take fentanyl. Distributed free by local officials, supplies are abundant at the house where Sleaze smokes fentanyl and works security in exchange for drugs. On a recent day, a customer heated up a dose of white fentanyl powder, sucked in the smoke through a short straw, and stopped breathing almost instantly. Sleaze says he grabbed several naloxone canisters and sprayed three doses up the comatose man’s nose, snapping him back to life. Many narcotics researchers say the widespread availability of naloxone appears to be the main factor in the sharp drop in synthetic overdose deaths this past year. In the 12 months through July 2024, deaths fell 22% percent in the U.S. and 34% in Ohio from the same period a year earlier. Nationwide, about 17,500 fewer people died than in the prior year.
The drop coincides with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s move in March 2023 to allow the sale of naloxone without a prescription. Several brands are available at pharmacies and online for between $30 and $45 per kit. Today, Ohio and other states have giveaway programs for the drug. The Columbus Police Department cites naloxone as a prime factor behind a decline in 911 calls for overdose emergencies here. Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, says a federal effort to get naloxone and other addiction treatments into communities is driving the steady decline in overdose deaths. Prosecutions of fentanyl suppliers and the drug’s ingredient makers have disrupted the entire supply chain, he adds, resulting in less potent fentanyl on the streets. The death tally remains high, though. As Reuters has documented, illicit fentanyl – synthesized from Chinese-made chemical ingredients smuggled into the U.S. and Mexico – remains cheap and plentiful. In Columbus, it’s $10 a fix. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Americans are projected to die from synthetic opioid overdoses this year, most from taking fentanyl or closely related drugs. That would be a sixfold increase over 2015, the year before the fentanyl crisis began. The U.S. is approaching some 450,000 deaths from synthetic opioids since then.
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