The latest figures on drug overdose deaths from the Centers for Disease Control contain both encouraging and discouraging news.
The data compiled by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics show drug overdose deaths in the United States decreased last year by three percent, down from 111,029 in 2022 to 107,543 last year. That is still a horrific loss of life, but it does represent a continued slight downward trend over the last four years.
Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana and Maine all experienced declines of 15 percent or more from the previous year. All five West Virginia border states saw a drop in drug overdose deaths in 2023, ranging from a two percent drop in Maryland to a nine percent decline in Pennsylvania.
However, West Virginia, which has long been ground zero for the opioid crisis, did not see a similar decline. In fact, overdose deaths rose slightly. The preliminary figures show 1,441 individuals died in West Virginia last year from drug overdoses. That is up from 1,422 the previous year.
That may not be statistically significant—it’s only a 1.3 percent increase—but behind each number was a human being, one of our own who lost their battle with a highly addictive drug, most likely fentanyl, which is 50 times more powerful than morphine.
Other states have more overdose deaths than we do, but that is because they have larger populations. For example, Ohio had three times as many deaths as West Virginia (4,739), but it has nearly seven times the population. Virginia’s overdose deaths were one-and-a-half times greater than West Virginia’s (2,373), but it has five times the population.
Sadly, according to 2022 statistics, West Virginia has the highest per capita death rate from drug overdoses of any state, about 90 individuals for every 100,000 people. Heart Disease is the number one cause of death in West Virginia, but accidental deaths, which includes drug overdoses, ranks fourth.
As always, we hope for improvement, but hope must be accompanied by action, and funding for that action will come from the West Virginia Foundation. The recently created 11-member foundation is responsible for distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years in drug lawsuit settlement money to drug prevention and treatment programs.
Matthew Christiansen, the state health officer who also serves on the foundation board, said their challenge is to ensure the dollars are “really making a true impact.”
“Addiction has its tentacles in just about everything across the spectrum, from education to law enforcement to first responders to the healthcare system to public health to local government to regional jails. You can just go on and on and on about the impact that addiction has had,” Christian said at a recent meeting.
That makes the true costs of the opioid crisis in West Virginia incalculable. We cannot afford to continue down this disastrous path.