Researchers are still cautious but see some signs that the increase in fatal overdoses has slowed.
In the United States, which is suffering from an opioid crisis, the use of dangerous drugs has claimed the lives of more and more people every year. Now, however, the situation may be gradually changing, write scientific magazine Scientific American.
The latest according to statistics the number of deaths due to drug overdose has turned to a slight decrease for the first time in five years.
The number of fatal overdoses has now decreased from the autumn of last year to the spring of this year, until which statistics are available. The decrease is also seen in deaths caused by dangerous opioids such as fentanyl.
Despite the latest decrease, more than 102,000 people still died of overdoses in the United States in the 12 months before March, which is a huge number and far more than before the corona era.
The latest numbers from the US health authorities are still preliminary, and it is not necessarily a permanent reversal. Still, researchers are now seeing subtle signs that the darkest phase may indeed be behind us.
Just before the corona pandemic, overdose deaths were less than 70,000 annually in the United States. Now, researchers consider it possible that the number of drug deaths would slowly begin to decrease towards the average of the time before the pandemic.
According to the magazine, one possible explanation for the decrease in overdose deaths is that after the end of the isolation period during the pandemic, some of the factors that led to the increase in risky use would have decreased.
There is more medication to treat opioid addiction and the availability of naloxone, the antidote to overdose, is better. Users can also use test strips to identify whether the substance contains fentanyl and thus avoid an overdose.
A more plausible partial explanation for the decrease in deaths may be that many of the fentanyl users who were at risk of overdose have already died. The tightening of supply may also have an effect: the authorities have succeeded in cracking down on supply chains in some parts of the country.
There is also considerable regional variation in the statistics on overdose deaths. While in most eastern states drug deaths have been on the decline, in the west they have continued to increase. Fentanyl became common on the west coast of the country several years later than on the east.
Despite the good signs researchers emphasizethat the opioid crisis is far from over and the authorities are still required to act to curb it.