Overdose deaths across New York state decreased slightly according to newly released federal data, but experts say they are still at crisis-level.
More than 6,000 New Yorkers still died from a drug overdose in 2023, data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. Counties outside of the five boroughs recorded an estimated 3,362 overdose deaths in 2023, down 3.5% from 2022.
The number of overdose deaths in the city had a more meager decline. There were a predicted 3,156 deaths in the five boroughs last year, a less than 1% decrease from the year before.
“These are still record breaking numbers,” said Toni Smith-Thompson, New York state director of the advocacy nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. “We don’t want to normalize what crisis-levels are.”
The CDC says its provisional overdose data counts are an underestimate, as ongoing death investigations could add to the tally. The agency publishes predicted overdose counts that convey the expected toll of the crisis. The data includes drug overdoses linked to opioids, as well as other substances such as cocaine and methamphetamine.
The provisional numbers are an indication of a relentless opioid epidemic that’s been driven by the presence of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s 50 times stronger than heroin. Last year marks the third year in a row that the U.S. saw more than 100,000 overdose deaths – a bleak milestone set for the first time on record in 2020.
The crisis takes a disproportionate toll on low-income New Yorkers and people of color, a nuance that’s not often reflected in statewide data, Smith-Thompson added.
Sizable death tolls have continued as New York state scrambles to distribute opioid settlement funds, a sum of money won from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors that will amount to roughly $2.9 billion in the coming decades. So far, the state has made $335 million of those funds available to local governments, medical providers and nonprofits that provide harm reduction and substance use disorder treatment services.
New York City has its own pot of funding amounting to roughly $300 million in the next 20 years. But in contrast with the state, the city has opened up settlement funds to a small pool of providers and has dedicated most of the funds to agencies including the public hospital system, the city’s health department and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
More than a year since the state started distributing settlement fund payments to providers, Smith-Thompson said advocates and medical experts are looking to see which interventions are working – information that’s difficult to glean from a death count that’s moved so little.
The state’s spending of opioid settlement funds is guided by the settlement fund’s advisory board, a group of government-appointed experts that makes recommendations to the state’s substance use officials. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration and that board have been at odds over the use of settlement funds for supervised drug use sites called overdose prevention centers, due to concerns around legality of supervised use of illegal substances.
The state’s Office of Addiction Services and Supports has touted $35 million in spending on harm reduction services, including the distribution of the overdose reversal medication naloxone and the widespread availability of strips that allow people to check their drugs for lethal substances.
“It’s great that more people are carrying Narcan and more people carrying fentanyl testing strips,” Smith-Thompson said, adding that she hopes those interventions contributed to declines in overdose deaths. “Those things alone are not going to get us out of the crisis.”
She added that advocates have continually pushed the state for a comprehensive plan on substance use disorder spending and the declaration of an overdose public health emergency – a request that Hochul has not met despite years of persistent deaths.
Amanda D'Ambrosio , 2024-05-16 11:33:04
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