Yes, drug-related fatalities have indeed declined over the past couple of years, for the US as a whole.
But not everywhere. In some places, overdose trends appear headed in the wrong direction. For instance, in a few of the counties near where we live in northern New Mexico, drug deaths have actually doubled or even tripled. Fair to say that for those communities, things have gotten worse.
The Guardian offers this helpful analysis, complete with interactive charts. It might even be possible for you to view data from the area where you live, provided that data is available, of course. That’s not always the case.
analysis reveals deaths rising in some regions even as US sees national decline
Given that ours is a very large nation where health status often varies between regions, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that overdose rates might decline substantially in, say, California, while holding steady or ticking up a bit in neighboring Nevada. In fact, that’s what happened.
But it took a while for researchers to discover that. That’s because of the difficulty in obtaining accurate, timely data. Without it, they struggle to plan for and respond to emerging trends.
As one expert complained: “We’re looking at [data from] April. That’s crazy. It’s October.”
It isn’t easy to understand. All this time and money spent on sophisticated technology and systems to track patterns in use — and scientists are still forced to rely on data that’s six months out of date?
No doubt the government is doing everything it can to correct the problem, to monitor and track and report on overdose incidents and fatalities. So that its own experts aren’t flying blind, and can promptly identify trouble spots and respond, hopefully to save lives…
Oh wait. I forgot. They cut the budget.
