Drug overdose deaths fell by more than 10 percent in Massachusetts in 2023 compared with the prior year, the first year-over-year decrease in four years, according to provisional data released this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Massachusetts saw 2,373 confirmed overdose deaths in 2023, compared to 2,647 confirmed overdoses in 2022 — the most ever recorded in the Commonwealth. Since 2000, the opioid crisis has killed 25,000 residents.
“I literally cried when I saw the CDC [report], it’s like ‘Holy moly,’ that’s good news,” said Deirdre Calvert, director of the state’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services.
Calvert said the data makes her “cautiously optimistic,” but she said more than 2,000 deaths is “still unacceptably too high.”
“The visual that I have in my head is turning the Titanic on a dime. You can’t do it — it takes time,” she said. “I feel like we’re finally making that turn. And so I feel and hope that we’re on a downward trajectory and continue to be on that, but I think that’s the million-dollar question.”
Advertisement
Calvert pointed to what she called improvements in the state’s prevention and overdose safety efforts, which included distributing more than 250,000 doses of naloxone — a drug that can reverse certain overdoses — improving access to housing without a sobriety requirement, and distributing fentanyl test strips.
Julie Burns, chief executive of RIZE Massachusetts, a nonprofit aimed at ending overdose deaths, said the state has done “a tremendous job” at outreach and providing support to individuals with addiction. She specifically applauded the state’s overdose prevention helpline, known as SafeSpot, which connects people using drugs with an operator who can call for help in case of an overdose.
“That’s one thing that could easily be scaled to reach more people,” Burns said.
Nationally, the CDC reported a 5.1 percent decrease in reported overdoses.
In a statement, CDC Chief Medical Officer Deb Houry called the national decline “heartening news for our nation and demonstrates we are making progress to prevent deaths from drug overdoses,” though she noted that more than 100,000 Americans still died of overdoses last year.
Overdoses increased in a handful of states, with the largest spikes in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, which saw increases in reported overdoses of roughly 44 percent, 24 percent, and 22 percent, respectively, according to the preliminary CDC data.
Advertisement
Leo Beletsky, director of Northeastern University’s Action Lab at the Center for Health Policy and Law, said the apparent decrease is “unequivocally good news” after watching overdoses climb for years.
“I would caution, though, against making too much of any one year’s numbers,” said Beletsky. “We have seen before plateaus, such as I think happened in 2018-2019, [where] there was a slight decrease and then the numbers just kept climbing.”
He said temporary declines and plateaus are to be expected, even during long-term increases, and that overdoses would need to decline for a few years before he felt comfortable classifying it as a trend. Burns agreed that one year was insufficient to declare a trend and added that she would likely need to see total overdoses fall below 2,000 per year before she felt confident calling it a downturn.
Beletsky said it can be difficult to say what causes short-term plateaus and decreases but noted that the state has increased its prevention and harm-reduction efforts in recent years.
“There’s been substantial progress, so that could certainly be the case, that things are finally yielding or bearing fruit.... There’s also trends in the drug supply that we could be seeing reflected in overdose numbers,” Beletsky said. He added that with increased awareness, the “fentanyl-fueled surge in overdoses is leveling off.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and deadly even in small doses, which has contributed to a rise in fatal overdoses over the last few years, according to the CDC. It is commonly mixed with drugs like heroin and cocaine, and can be made into pills resembling other opioids.
Advertisement
The Department of Public Health publishes its own statewide data twice a year. Its last report, published in December, found that opioid deaths were down 1.8 percent in the first nine months of 2023. The next report is scheduled for release June 12, Calvert said.
Calvert said she hopes that report will track similarly to the CDC’s numbers, but emphasized that, while a decrease is good news, it’s far from a conclusion.
“These are not just numbers,” Calvert said. “They represent somebody’s loved one, and we have to remember that.”
Daniel Kool can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @dekool01.