Opioid deaths slow, but reasons and outlook are unclear

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chart

Opioid deaths fell slightly over the past six months, but no one is sure why, or whether the trend will continue. 

"Preliminary figures reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week show that compared with the 12 months ending September 2017, opioid deaths are down 2.8 percent in the 12 months that ended March 2018, reflecting about 2,000 fewer people who have died of a drug overdose. But, as The Associated Press points out, the final numbers for this year won’t be available until the end of next year, so we don’t know if this downward trend has continued," Olga Khazan reports for The Atlantic.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at a conference this week, "We are so far from the end of the epidemic, but we are perhaps at the end of the beginning," Politico reports.

The cause for the decline is unknown, but there are a few likely reasons: "Doctors are prescribing fewer painkillers. More states are making naloxone, which reverses opioid overdoses, widely available. And it’s possible that more addicts have started medication-assisted therapies like buprenorphine, which is how France solved its own opioid epidemic years ago. Indeed, the states with the biggest declines in overdose deaths were those like Vermont that have used evidence-based, comprehensive approaches to tackling opioid addiction," Khazan reports. Also, "fentanyl and heroin addicts might also have become more careful about how they consume the drugs."

It's possible the trend will reverse, as it did in 2013 after opioid overdose deaths stalled from 2011 to 2012, said addiction expert Keith Humphreys of Stanford University.