Fentanyl deaths appear to be declining for the first time in a decade after reaching astronomical levels, but experts warn it’s for “horrible” reasons.
They say the drug is simply running out of people to kill, after claiming the lives of more than 100,000 Americans in the last decade.
Drug overdoses killed about 107,000 Americans last year, down from a peak of 77,693 last summer.
In King County, which includes Seattle, a microcosm for the rest of the country, deaths plummeted nearly 10 percent by the end of 2023 compared to the last quarter.
But Dr. Caleb Banta-Green, an addictions expert at the University of Washington, said it could be because many users are already dead.
Seattle, Washington, has been considered a hub for synthetic drugs such as fentanyl. Experts warned that while deaths are declining in the area, it may be for the wrong reasons (pictured, a man smoking fentanyl in Seattle in 2022)
The graph above shows the number of Americans who die from synthetic drug overdoses each week. These are deaths from fentanyl. After years of increases, deaths nationwide have finally stabilized
He told the local news station. KUOW: ‘There are only so many people who take a drug, and when it has such a high fatality rate, eventually, in a really horrible way, it will start to self-extinguish like a forest fire.
‘So it’s literally burning the fuel. The horrible thing in this case is that the fuel is the people.”
Earlier this year, the CDC reported that drug overdose deaths decreased three percent between 2023 and 2022. This was the first annual decrease since 2018.
In April 2024, according to the latest available data, the United States recorded 65,787 deaths from synthetic opioid overdoses, down from a peak of 77,693 in June 2023.
Washington state has previously been considered a fentanyl overdose hotspot.
According to a CDC report from December 2023, the state suffered a 41 percent increase in drug overdose deaths, which experts believe was largely due to the ‘zombie drug’ fentanyl and xylazine.
In 2022, a record 56 children in Washington state’s foster care and child welfare system died or nearly died after taking illegal drugs, including fentanyl. This was as much as the combined total from 2019 to 2021.
Of the 56 cases, 38 involved fentanyl.
Dr. Caleb Banta-Green, an addictions expert at the University of Washington, said the decline in synthetic opioid deaths in Seattle could be because the drug is running out of people to kill.
The graph above shows how deaths from synthetic opioids in Washington’s fentanyl hotspot have begun to slowly decline beginning in January, the latest data available.
However, rates have seen a slow decline since late last year. According to the most recent data from the CDC, there were 2,632 deaths from synthetic opioids in April 2024, slightly below a peak of 2,727 in February 2024.
Banta-Green also pointed to declines in centers along the East Coast, such as West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
West Virginia, which has been plagued by the opioid crisis for more than 30 years, reported 1,002 synthetic opioid deaths in April 2024, down from 1,169 in September 2023. The Mountain State saw a spike of 1,263 in April of 2021.
Pennsylvania has also been put in the spotlight for its rise in fentanyl use and deaths, particularly in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood.
In 2022, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health recorded 1,413 unintentional overdose deaths, an 11 percent increase from 2021.
West Virginia, which has been plagued by an opioid epidemic for the past 30 years, has also seen its death rates from synthetic opioids decline, as the graph above shows.
And the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates that eight in 10 of these overdoses were due to fentanyl.
The CDC does not have data on synthetic opioid overdoses in Pennsylvania; The state reported a total of 4,721 drug overdose deaths in 2023, a nine percent decrease from 2022.
Dr Banta-Green said: “I hope we continue to have a decline, but I hope the future decline is not because people are dying but because they are accessing really wonderful, life-saving interventions that we are really doing great.” . advances to make it more widely available.’