NYC health officials urged all residents to carry the opioid-reversal medication naloxone this week as overdose deaths in the city reached a record high.
Recently released data shows that a record 3,026 people died of a drug overdose in NYC in 2022, a 12 percent increase from the previous year. The rate of overdose fatalities in New York City was 43.3 per 100,000 residents in 2022, the highest documented since the city began recording data in 2020.
This week, New York City advised its residents to carry naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of opioids, including heroin, methadone, morphine, codeine, and fentanyl. It can be administered as a nasal spray or needle injection. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released an advisory on September 25 encouraging all New Yorkers to “learn the signs of an overdose” and administer naloxone.
“No one is spared, even if you think otherwise,” Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said on September 25. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene offers training sessions to teach individuals how to administer naloxone, and its website lists locations to obtain the medication for free.
“People who use drugs should not do so alone or let loved ones use drugs alone,” reads the advisory. Sixty percent of fatal overdoses occurred in a private home.
Fentanyl was present in 81 percent of overdose deaths in NYC last year; the substance has been present in nearly 80 percent of fatal overdoses in the city for the past five years.
“Everyone should have a candid, judgement-free conversation at your kitchen table about drugs and their danger,” Vasan concluded. “We’re all in this together.”
According to guidance issued by the New York State Department of Health, both someone who reports an overdose and a person who overdoses have “significant protections” under state law and will not be charged with drug possession, even if they shared the substances.
According to the CDC, there were 109,680 fatal overdoses reported in the U.S. in 2022. Of those deaths, 79,770 involved opioids.
Days after the NYC announcement, Senators Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) and Rick Scott (R., Fla.) introduced the School Access to Naloxone Act, which aims to provide schools with funding for a naloxone supply and training employees to administer it.
“Across the United States, the fentanyl crisis continues to rage and take the lives of innocent Americans,” Senator Scott said in a Wednesday statement. “I’ve talked to parents all across the Sunshine State who have dealt with the crushing loss of a child to fentanyl, and know too well that Florida has not been spared from this deadly crisis, and neither have our schools.”
In 2021, there were 1,146 adolescent overdose deaths in the United States.
“Oregon currently faces the fastest growing drug-related death rate among teens in the entire nation — we must show up for our younger generations and present effective solutions to this crisis,” said Senator Merkley.
In 2020, Oregon voters approved a measure to decriminalize possession of all drugs, including heroin and methamphetamines, for personal use.
On the second annual Fentanyl Awareness Day in the United States, Senator Cory Booker (D., NJ) blocked the Fairness in Fentanyl Sentencing Act of 2023.