Provisional data shows that overdose deaths in West Virginia declined by 43.5% in the last year.
That’s information from the National Center for Health Statistics through the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. The center warns that provisional counts are often incomplete and causes of death may be pending investigation, resulting in an underestimate relative to final counts.
“That’s great news and it’s really unprecedented,” said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, chief medical officer for Valley Health and a former state public health officer.
“We have been hoping to see a headline like this for a decade or more, not only here in West Virginia but in the addiction field more broadly.
Drug overdose deaths fell 27% across the nation, according to the preliminary data, the largest one-year decline ever.
West Virginia has had the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation.
The National Center for Health Statistics has shown that West Virginia has been experiencing a drug overdose death rate of 80.9 per 100,000 people. That has been adding up to more than 1,000 drug overdose deaths a year in West Virginia.
“We’ve had a historic crisis with regards to addiction, overdoses and overdose death, and we’re finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel,” Christiansen said on MetroNews Talkline.
Christiansen said a variety of approaches seem to have worked together to bring down drug overdose deaths, but he expressed concern that some financial support could be in jeopardy at the federal level.
“Now that that some things are working, we need to look really critically about all of those programs, evaluate the programs to make sure that we’re spending the dollars where they’re having the biggest impact,” he said.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said more work needs to be done to fight fatal drug overdoses.
“Now’s not the time to take our foot off the pedal. If West Virginia was down 43 percent that isn’t a rounding error; that’s significant,” said Capito, speaking to West Virginia reporters during a briefing last week.
The senator attributed the improvements to factors like grants through the Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, treatment, transitional housing units and job training. Capito also said federal crackdowns on fentanyl coming across America’s borders have helped.
“At the same time, we need to fund drug courts, we need to fund treatment, we need to fund accessibility, we need to fund the mental health that goes along with it,” Capito said in response to a question by reporter Andrew Spellman of the Spirit of Jefferson newspaper.
West Virginia’s decline is among the steepest in the nation, agreed Erin DeLullo, a Jefferson County resident who is host of The Poisoning podcast and newsletter, which focus on the fentanyl and opioid epidemic.
“It’s worth noting, however, that although drug overdose deaths have declined significantly in the last year or so, they remain higher than in 2020. This is to say that while there is room to celebrate, this should still be considered a crisis (just as it was considered in 2020),” DeLullo told MetroNews.
“There are numerous possible reasons for this, and success has a thousand fathers. I strongly believe that the availability of naloxone is among the reasons for the decline.”