SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
war on drugs
Trump-GOP Cuts Could Reverse Last Year's Historic Drop in Drug Overdose Deaths, Warn Experts
Cuts to Medicaid and prevention, harm reduction, and treatment programs "will equal more people dying," said one public health expert.
May 15, 2025
Federal public health officials on Thursday announced an unprecedented drop last year in drug overdose deaths, which have plagued the United States for decades and had been rising steadily over the past several years.
But experts warned that now is exactly the wrong time to "take our foot off the gas pedal," as the Republican Party and President Donald Trump are threatening to do with steep cuts to Medicaid and other federal programs.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that an estimated 80,391 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses in 2024—a 27% drop, with about 30,000 fewer deaths than in 2023 and "more than 81 lives saved every day."
Synthetic opioids like fentanyl were still involved in most overdose deaths last year, but those deaths were down 37% between 2023-24.
"I would characterize this as a historically significant decrease in overdose deaths," Brandon Marshall, a Brown University School of Public Health epidemiologist, toldThe Washington Post. "We're really seeing decreases almost across the entire nation at this point."
Experts noted that numerous factors are likely behind the plunging fatal overdose numbers. The CDC said it has been able to strengthen overdose prevention capacities across the U.S. since Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2017 during his first term, making congressional support available.
As CNNreported, with new federal support, local policymakers in places like Mecklenburg County, North Carolina have been able to secure vending machines with naloxone, a medication that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose; employ epidemiologists who focus on opioid trends to prevent deaths; and infrastructure that has helped public workers determine where to target their overdose prevention work.
But the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which funded those programs, was targeted by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year as its Trump-appointed leader, billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, sought to cut federal jobs. The center is also identified as a "duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary" program that should be cut in the White House's proposed budget.
"Any changes or impacts to those funding streams would mean that we either have to find other funding to support the team that works in that department, or we would have to lay them off. That would, of course, impact the work," Dr. Raynard Washington, director of the county health department, told CNN. "Experts work hand-in-hand with us on the strategies that we choose to implement on the ground, and then how we're evaluating what's working, and then how we share those best practices. That technical assistance is also just as invaluable as the actual grant dollars that we receive."
Medicaid cuts in the proposed budget, which would slash $880 billion in federal spending to secure tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, could also reverse the historic progress made in 2024, as the healthcare program covers 47% of people with opioid use disorder and 64% of people who receive outpatient treatment.
Chad Sabora, a drug policy expert who helped spearhead the letter, told The Washington Post that cuts to Medicaid will leave people without medications they use to diminish the effects of opioid use disorder, like buprenorphine.
"It will equal more people dying," he told the Post.
On Monday, more than 320 faculty members from universities and other institutions wrote to Republican and Democratic Senate leaders to warn them that "dismantling the lifesaving work" of the CDC and other health agencies in the budget would have "dire consequences."
"At a time when the federal government should be boosting investments in behavioral health systems, service delivery, and public health surveillance programs, we are seeing drastic cuts to key agencies, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the CDC, and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)," they said.
The 2026 fiscal year budget proposes over $1 billion in cuts to SAMHSA—a reduction of 16% of its funding—and $3.6 billion in cuts to the CDC, or nearly half if its funding.
The faculty members listed a number of programs that will be impacted those cuts, including:
- State and local health departments and behavioral health agencies;
- Evidence-based prevention programs like community-based naloxone distribution, peer outreach programs, drug-use related infectious disease prevention programs, and drug test strip programs, which help people determine whether a drug is laced with fentanyl;
- The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (SAMHSA), which is used extensively by policymakers, researchers, and health professionals and gives accurate population estimates of trends in alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; and
- The Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program and Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program (HRSA), which will train the next generation of substance use care specialists across the country, with special programs dedicated to rural areas.
"Members of Congress, we urge you to protect these vital substance use and mental health services. Millions of Americans are depending on you," wrote the experts.
The White House signaled in the proposed budget that it doesn't support evidence-based harm reduction programs funded through SAMHSA grants, calling them "dangerous activities."
Adams Sibley, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, told CNN that "now is the time to double down on efforts to educate and recruit folks into harm reduction and treatment, whatever their version of safer use looks like."
With fellow researcher Nabarun Dasgupta, Sibley tracked gradual declines in overdose deaths in cities and states over the past three years, before the national shift was seen in 2024.
They identified shifts in the population of drug users, with a growing number of people in the at-risk population taking advantage of newly funded treatment options—or having already died of overdoses—as one contributing factor to the plunging overdose death numbers last year, as well as a change in the supply of drugs available.
"The general dissatisfaction with the illicit opioid supply right now is surprisingly high," Dasgupta told CNN, pointing to the animal sedative xylazine, also known as "tranq."
Many users have reached an "inflection point" with their substance use disorders, said Sibley and Dasgupta, and policymakers must ensure the treatment and prevention programs funded by the CDC, SAMHSA, and other agencies are still there for them.
"The one thing that substance use treatment providers and people who use drugs alike will tell you is that people are ready when they're ready, and there are a lot of people ready right now," Sibley said.
Daniel Ciccarone, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, cautioned that even with last year's significant decrease, "we're still at very high levels of overdose."
"We need steady pressure," he told CNN. "To the degree that we stop paying attention... we will see a reversal."
Keep ReadingShow Less
We Don’t Throw People Away: Why I Support a Harm Reduction Approach in LA
We have a moral responsibility to set an example for the rest of the nation: one that’s rooted in compassion, humanity, and data-driven approaches.
May 07, 2025
If you were drowning, I wouldn’t ask how you got there before throwing you a lifeline.
I wouldn’t tell you to swim harder.
I wouldn’t tell you to make better choices, I wouldn’t hope you sink, and I wouldn’t put you in a cage.
If you were drowning, I would reach for you, pull you up, and do everything in my power to keep you alive.
That’s what harm reduction is: keeping people alive.
We don’t criminalize someone for losing a limb to the effects of diabetes. We don’t arrest them for not taking their insulin or for struggling to manage their blood sugar. We surround them with medical care, support systems, and resources to help them live healthier lives.
The first step isn’t forcing someone into a system they aren’t ready for. The first step is keeping them alive long enough to say yes.
Problematic substance use—a chronic, relapsing disease—is no different. And harm reduction is one of the many courses of medical action we’re taking to address this in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, where the opioid crisis and homelessness collide in painful, visible ways.
I understand the frustration. I hear the anger. Lock them up, people say—oblivious to the harrowing truth that this crisis is made profoundly worse in our jails.
I want a healthy, accessible, thriving MacArthur Park just as much as my neighbors; a MacArthur Park where hardworking families aren’t forced to live amid trauma and visible substance use. But let me be clear: I don’t throw people away—and I don’t invest in failed solutions.
People don’t wake up one day and decide to become homeless or addicted. They end up there because they’ve been failed by an economic system that keeps people in poverty, by a housing system that makes rent impossible to afford, by a criminal justice system that treats problematic substance use like a crime instead of a disease, by a political system that chronically underfunds mental health, and by a for-profit healthcare system that allowed big pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the opioid epidemic and knowingly steal thousands of lives in exchange for billions of dollars.
We’ve spent over a trillion dollars on the failed War on Drugs, and the availability and potency of illicit drugs have only increased—along with our prison population.
It’s time for a different approach.
Decades of research have shown that harm reduction strategies provide significant public health benefits, including preventing deaths from overdoses and preventing transmission of infectious diseases. That’s why our office partnered with the LA County Department of Health Services and Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles (HHCLA) to deploy an overdose response team in the park seven days a week. Every day, they provide wound care, hygiene kits, naloxone, methadone, and harm reduction tools to people experiencing problematic substance use. They clean up biohazardous waste, picking up and safely disposing of left-behind needles and pipes that put our families in danger. They do the work that Recreation and Parks and LAPD can’t while reducing call volume to emergency responders, and we are all safer for it.
Since launching in late 2024, this team has collected over 14,000 hazardous items and distributed more than 3,600 naloxone kits—totaling over 11,000 doses of life-saving medication—and saved 52 lives. Those 52 people have names and faces and stories and hopes and dreams. They are someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone who now has a shot at accepting treatment, because we know that recovery isn’t a straight path—it takes multiple touchpoints. The first step isn’t forcing someone into a system they aren’t ready for. The first step is keeping them alive long enough to say yes.
I also want to be clear about what our office can and cannot do. The City Council cannot make arrests. What we can do is invest in solutions. We can choose to fund the strategies that actually reduce harm, that save lives, that address the root causes of these crises. Or, we can choose to push people out of sight and throw them away.
The fight for humanity goes far beyond MacArthur Park. We see it happening across the country. We see it in how President Donald Trump treats immigrants like pawns, willing to let families suffer for cheap political points. We see it in how he attacks the LGBTQ+ community, stripping away protections and treatment, denying their very existence. We see marginalized communities degraded and vilified and sacrificed at the altar of power, and we see misinformation peddled at every turn to satiate a hungry, desperate base. It is easy to dehumanize. It is easy to discard people. It is easy to think of human lives as inconvenient. But we have to resist that urge. We are better than that in Los Angeles. We have a moral responsibility to set an example for the rest of the nation: one that’s rooted in compassion, humanity, and data-driven approaches. And since my very first day in office, that’s what I’ve always done, no matter how uphill the battle may be.
MacArthur Park is struggling. Yes, we are frustrated, scared, and sometimes, angry. But I refuse to abandon the people suffering in front of us.
We don’t throw people away. We fight for them.
Keep ReadingShow Less
4/20 Is No Celebration for Thousands—Trump Can Change That
The time for incremental change is over. The cannabis industry is booming, generating billions in revenue and creating jobs. Yet, thousands remain imprisoned for actions that are now considered perfectly legal.
Apr 20, 2025
Across the country, cannabis users today will celebrate 4/20, a day synonymous with the plant's consumption and a symbol of its growing acceptance.
But for thousands of people still incarcerated for cannabis-related offenses, 4/20 is not a day of celebration; it’s a reminder of an unjust system that has yet to make amends.
The legal landscape around cannabis has evolved dramatically. Forty-one states now have some form of legal cannabis. Cannabis companies are going public on Wall Street, dispensaries are opening in high-end shopping districts, and tax revenues from legal sales are funding schools and infrastructure.
Nevertheless, tens of thousands of people remain imprisoned for the very substance that is now a billion-dollar industry. Millions of individuals are also still coping with the life-long burden of having a cannabis conviction on their record.
This is a moral and economic outrage that demands an immediate solution.
President Donal Trump and his administration have a chance to go further than President Joe Biden ever did on cannabis by pardoning every individual imprisoned for cannabis at the federal level.
That’s not as unlikely as some might think.
On the campaign trail, Trump said he was starting to “agree a lot more” that individuals should not be criminalized for cannabis when it’s being legalized across the country. He even posted, “I believe it is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”
In his first term, President Trump commuted the sentences of 16 people and pardoned 6 individuals for cannabis offenses. He also championed the bipartisan sentencing reform bill, the First Step Act, which was designed to promote rehabilitation, lower recidivism, and reduce excessive sentences for certain federal drug offenses.
He’s not alone in his administration. J.D. Vance told Joe Rogan that his overall philosophy on marijuana and psychedelics is to “live and let live,” and reaffirmed that he feels people should not be criminalized over cannabis. Elon Musk, the de facto head of DOGE, famously smoked a blunt on Rogan’s podcast.
Clemency isn’t the only place where President Trump can go further than his predecessor. He could also significantly boost America's budding cannabis industry by rescheduling cannabis. This would both reduce tax burdens and help the United States tap into an industry projected to reach over $100 billion by 2030, while also easing the burden on law enforcement and the judicial system.
Rescheduling is also an opportunity for Trump to deliver for Black and Brown communities, who suffer the most from outdated cannabis policies and supported the president in record numbers in 2024. On average, Black individuals are more than three times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for cannabis despite similar consumption rates. President Trump can help right an injustice that has gone on far too long.
Both granting clemency for people convicted of cannabis-related crimes and rescheduling cannabis would be immensely popular decisions for President Trump. A YouGov poll found that 70 percent of Americans support clearing criminal records for past non-violent marijuana-related convictions. According to an American Civil Liberties Union poll, 84% of registered voters support the release of people serving time for crimes that are no longer considered illegal.
Only one in 10 Americans believe marijuana should not be legal at all, according to the Pew Research Center.
The time for incremental change is over. The cannabis industry is booming, generating billions in revenue and creating jobs. Yet, thousands remain imprisoned for actions that are now considered perfectly legal.
This is a moral and economic outrage that demands an immediate solution. President Trump has a penchant for bold action and the power to turn 4/20 into a day for real celebration through cannabis clemency and rescheduling.
He should seize this moment and right the wrongs that every president this century has kicked down the road.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular