CDC Projects Decline in Drug Overdose Deaths for 2018

Policy leaders and researchers are extracting hope out of preliminary data suggesting that the nation may have seen a drop of around 5% in drug overdose deaths in 2018. The numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that fatal overdoses could see a decline below the 70,000 level when the final data for 2018 are released later this year.

The overall numbers carry great resonance in the treatment and recovery communities, with most public presentations on the opioid crisis citing the more than 70,000 drug overdose deaths that were recorded in 2017. Of course, the CDC's current estimate of over 68,000 overdose deaths for 2018 hardly will bring cause for a sense of relief, and is being accompanied by ongoing concern over the influence of fentanyl and a rise in illegal stimulant-related deaths.

“The small decline is welcome. However, the death rate is still unacceptably high,” Daniel Ciccarone, MD, MPH, professor of family community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who regularly tracks epidemiological trends, tells Addiction Professional.

The CDC's preliminary data suggest that a decline in deaths from prescription opioid overdose deaths is largely responsible for the drop in overall fatalities. Ciccarone believes the overall decline also can be attributed in part to increased access to treatment and access to the overdose reversal drug naloxone.

He adds that public health epidemics tend over time to “burn out,” adding that “the fear of the drug and its consequences has an inhibiting effect on the new persons who might come to the drug. Fentanyl is, and has been, an 'unreasonable' drug that new folks are possibly eschewing in favor of newer drugs (e.g., stimulants).”

Fentanyl's presence remains strong, accounting for most of the nearly 32,000 overdose deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone in 2018 (the 2017 figure for deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone was more than 29,000).

Federal officials say they believe the CDC's provisional data suggest that the nation is beginning to win its long fight against the opioid epidemic. “The latest provisional data on overdose deaths show that America's united efforts to curb opioid use disorder and addiction are working,” Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement this week.