Almost a decade in the California Fentanyl crisis, public health experts are finding reasons for optimism and concern.
Fatal opioid overdose in the state have finally retreated from the highest record, with around 6,700 deaths registered in the first half of 2024, a drop of approximately 16% of 2023.
But doctors, researchers and some Los Angeles County officials warn that many key measures accredited by turning the tide are in danger. President Trump has reduced federal funds for addiction treatment programs, with some services in Los Angeles County in the cutting block.
The preliminary data of the County of the sample around 1,300 fatal overdose falls based on fentanil and other opioids until mid -2024, about 300 feer deaths compared to a similar time in 2023.
Several experts said that the emphasis on reducing damage, including the greater availability of the overdose reversion drug, naloxone and fentanyl test kits, was behind the improvement.
But the money destined to support such efforts is now drying.
A spokesman for the Public Health Department of the County said that federal cuts included rescue more than $ 45 million in damage reduction grants. Some funds for the prevention of substance abuse were also completed in the middle of the contract due to changes in the federal budget, said the spokesman.
“Just as we are progressing in overdose numbers, now it is not time to disin,” said the statement of the Department of Public Health.
At the same time, local authorities are reimbursing a more traditional approach to combat crime, which includes the search for longest prison sentences against some drug criminals.
The Californians voted to approve the proposal 36 on an empty stomach, imposing stricter sanctions for repeated robbery and the crimes involving fentanyl.
The Dist. Atty county. Nathan Hochman campaigned last year on the drug crisis, promising to hold “fentanyl/murderous poisoners completely for her actions to spread this poison through communities.”
“Each fentanyl trafficker will be warned about the severe repercussions to his freedom if they kill a person with his poison,” said the Hochman campaign website.
Damage reduction workers in Santa Ana distribute the Naloxone Overdose Reversion Medication and syringes to customers who use opioids.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Ricardo García, Public Defender of the Los Angeles County, said the renewed emphasis on punishment for drug crimes is felt as a flashback when the leges prayers due to the mass imprisonment fed by crack.
“It is something we have seen before it rises very fast and Orte has a devastating effect on poor communities, black and brown communities, and frankly, taxpayers, such as the cost of dealing with this overpolration,” Garcia said.
The parallel to the era of the crack are worrisome for many who work in the first line of the current crisis, from the dehumanization rhetoric, which describes fentanyl users as “zombies”, to punitive policies of sentence.
Shoshanna Scholar, Director of Damage Reduction for County, said that the key to saving lives is clear: increasing the distribution efforts of naloxone and overdose prevention in high -risk communities.
“In the last 25 years, there is real recognition with the use of substances and see it as a chronic condition, instead of the bad behavior that punishment to change it,” Scholar said. “We know there is another way and works real to reduce the number of dead people.”
Since 2023, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has invested more than $ 1 billion in subsidies for the distribution of naloxone, fentanyl test strips and other initiatives against overcrows. The Naloxone, also known as Narcan, is now avable for the purchase of all California residents through the Calrrx initiative for $ 24.
At the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival of this year, End Overdose, an organization based in Burbank, had a stand near the EDM scenarios of the festival that offered Naloxone training, free doses and a variety of booty.
In the position, two attendees to the twenty -year -old festival, Mimi and Lily, who asked to be identified only by their names to discuss drug use, said that all possible precaities had legs for fear of fear of being sold to them.
“Honestly, we learn more from Reddit and our parents. They always tell me to be careful with fentanil,” Mimi said. “It reminds me a lot when people promote abstinence when it comes to safe sex, when they really should talk about condoms and birth control. Because, in any case, people are going to make drugs, so they must make sure it is safe.”
Dr. Brian Hurley, medical director of the County that supervises the addiction treatment initiatives, said that the implementation of rescuer sanctions to drug users can increase the risk of overdose, since people are more likely to use alone and in secret.
“It becomes more difficult to involve people in an open, honest and neutral conversation about whether they are ready to stop using, if they are ready to try intermediate housing or take a refuge bed. All these things take people out of the street in a way that advocates.
He and others pointed out that also with difficult crimes policies of the 1980s and 90s, Crack cocaine consumption has never left. And despite the fact that local authorities say for years that judgments and prosecutions alone are not the solution, experts said it is still difficult for those who need treatment to find help.
Devon O’Malley, on the left, an administrator of cases of damage reduction with the Venice Family Clinic, delivers the Narcan Nasol Aerosol to Ken Newark, 63, in Tongva Park in Santa Monica.
(Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
“People are pressing more severe sanctions and more judgment, but it is not like people to use a medicine they don’t want to use,” said Dr. Ricky Bluthenthal, a professor of public health at the USC. “Generally he speaks, imprisonment is not a place where people improve.”
That message, however, is contrary to the hard line approach that is now driven by the White House. Trump has cited fentanyl deaths as a reason for tariffs against China, a source of chemical ingredients used in clandestine laboratories, and suggested drones attacks in Mexican drug cartels. Trump has also declared to Fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction and asked to give drug traffickers the death penalty
For Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of UC San Francisco who investigates public health and drug use, it is difficult not to see history repeating Itelf.
The professor, who recently published an article about “moral panic” about drug use, said elected officials have been more concerned about optics and approval ratings than addressing the underlying causes of addiction.
“We are afraid of this drug, and we are afraid of the people who use drugs,” Ciccarone said. “When we are afraid, the natural human response is to seek security. Who can make us feel more secure? The police and the courts.”
The trend recently in overdose deaths at least sacrifices a ray of hope, he added, even if no one can agree on the best way to follow.
“I recognize that as a human impulse of fear, urgency and panic, that we must do something,” he said. “I heard this police saying:” We have to be seen as doing something, “and I say:” Ok, but I don’t get worse. “
