Over the past decade, far too many lives have been lost to fentanyl-related overdoses. No doubt, many of us here in Southern California know of people who have been harmed by this scourge of drug poisonings.
Which is why it is a welcome development that overdoses are now in decline across the region.
On June 25, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced 2024 saw a 22% decline in overdose and drug poisoning deaths, to 2,438. The department called it “the most significant drop in LA County history.” Especially noteworthy: a 37% decrease deaths from fentanyl. Preliminary 2025 data show the positive trend continuing.
Similar drops of 22% in San Francisco County and 28% in San Diego County have been reported. The Orange County Department of Public Health told us overdose deaths there dropped 29.7% for the 12 months ending on Sept. 30, 2024.
Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine and the author of “Beyond Control: Drug Prohibition, Gun Regulation, and the Search for Harm-Reducing Alternatives,” offered insight into this crisis.
The coronavirus pandemic and the social and economic disruption it brought drove a significant increase in overdoses in recent years, he notes.
What brought it down was not stiffer penalties or police enforcement, but smarter responses to drug poisonings.
Important factors in the decline he identified were wider availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist that quickly reverses overdoses; a shift from users injecting fentanyl to smoking it; and greater caution or increased tolerance among fentanyl users.
Politicians and law enforcement officials are sure to spin their actions as key to this reductio. In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed President Trump’s border policies seized 3,400 kilos of fentanyl, which “saved 258 million lives” – absurdly 75% of the U.S. population.
Actually, Sullum warned, increased federal anti-drug efforts have been counterproductive.
Cracking down on pain prescriptions has driven those suffering unbearable pain to dangerous black-market drugs. “Even as opioid prescriptions fell dramatically, the upward trend in drug deaths not only continued but accelerated,” he said.
The real way to keep overdose deaths declining is not another Reagan-era “war” on drugs, but sensible public-health policies such as naloxone provision and public health education.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Fentanyl deaths fall without a drug war )
Also on site :
- Sharon Osbourne says she disinvited greedy band from Ozzy’s Black Sabbath farewell concert: ‘It’s not the time to make a profit’
- China and Russia Keep Their Distance From Iran During Crisis
- Syria Sets Entry Fees for Private Vehicles Crossing via Turkey