KENTUCKY OPIOID CRISIS: DO THE MATH, IT’S THE NARCAN
In Kentucky as consistently elsewhere, data affirm the longstanding obvious meaning of recent drops in opioid overdose deaths – desperate intensive Narcan campaigns are harm reduction, reducing deaths due to expert treatment failure
by Clark Miller
Published November 8, 2024
It’s the same predictable story.
In Kentucky, drops in opioid overdose deaths in 2023, a smaller drop the year before.
But different. Some news reports declining to avoid reporting the direct observations and reports of professionals and others involved directly in communities, “on the ground”, in desperate, intensive, successful campaigns to flood communities with the fatal OD reversing drug naloxone (Narcan), receiving reports of its successful use by non-professionals in community settings, repeatedly and frequently.
Local and regional reporting with no reason not to craft headlines and feature images to represent what the evidence shows them to be the obvious connections.
Like this, from a news piece in the Kentucky Lantern –
Or this, from the AP –
Or this, from the University of Kentucky news service –
It turns out, they’re all on to something – a truth.
A truth that America’s expert class has been desperately working to mystify and escape – that the recent drops in opioid overdose deaths are due entirely to successful Narcan targeted distribution, training and use in community settings, with no evidence that expert medical and other gold standard treatments are providing any more benefit or protection than they have over past decades of an increasingly lethal crisis.
The numbers tell the story, and don’t lie, nor do the front line healthcare, community, and support workers who are witnessing first-hand the intensively expanding distribution, training, effective use, and outcomes of campaigns to make the potentially lethal opioid overdose reversal agent naloxone more accessible in communities.
Let’s take a look.
From the University of Kentucky news piece –
Increasing access to naloxone is one of the three primary evidence-based strategies implemented in the HCS intervention, which also focuses on effective delivery of medication for opioid use disorder and improved prescription opioid safety practices.
An analysis of the HEALing Communities Study published earlier this year showed promising results in reducing opioid-related deaths. Communities implementing the intervention experienced a 9% lower rate of opioid overdose deaths compared to control communities.
As part of the massive $350 million NIH study of opioid crisis treatment approaches, Kentucky engaged in naloxone campaigns to dramatically increase Narcan distribution and use where it was needed, in communities and targeted areas of high-risk opioid use.
Kentucky communities achieved the greatest increase in naloxone distribution among the four participating states. The eight Kentucky counties participating in the study’s first wave implemented 104 different strategies and achieved a distribution rate of 6,400 units of naloxone per 100,000 residents — for total of 40,822 naloxone units. These intervention communities tripled their naloxone distribution compared to control communities — an increase more than twice that of any other state in the study.
The new study results showed that across all four states, communities implementing the intervention distributed 79% more naloxone units compared to control communities. The increase was driven by several different strategies including providing naloxone at addiction treatment centers, community outreach programs and increasing availability at local pharmacies.
From the Kentucky Lantern report –
Van Ingram, the executive director for the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, said distribution of Narcan, which can reverse opioid overdoses, in the state is key. Local health departments, recovery community centers and regional prevention centers provide free Narcan across the state. . . . In 2023, 160,000 doses of Narcan were distributed in Kentucky.
160,000 targeted community doses of Narcan in 2023,
over the year in which nationally and in widespread locales opioid overdose deaths began to drop significantly.
Not until then, over decades of increasing administration of American experts’ gold standard, “proven” medical cures, as we saw in Minnesota.
And from Kentucky’s 2023 Drug Overdose Fatality Report –
And what about the reduced number of fatal opioid overdoses?
In 2022, there were 2,200 overdose deaths, a decrease of 2.5% from 2021.
In 2023, there were 1,984 overdose deaths, down by 216 deaths from 2022.
216 fewer opioid overdose deaths
[Rhetorical question alert.]
Do we believe that the targeted, community outreach distribution (and training) of 160, 000 Narcan doses and additionally 96,780 naloxone reversal kits, a radical targeted increase from prior years, would more than account, many times more, for all of those 216 fewer deaths?
Right.
That literally leaves no prevented opioid overdose deaths in Kentucky over 2023 – 216 – to possibly be accounted for by other factors, factors like America’s gold standard MAT substitute opioid treatment, or rehab, or “addiction treatment”.
The prevented deaths are all accounted for by Narcan saves, accounted for many times over, orders of magnitude over.
To dispute that requires supporting with evidence the argument that compared to prior years, thousands more of potentially fatal opioid ODs were not prevented in 2023 by targeted provision of the more than 250,000 naloxone units.
Right.
There is no question or uncertainty
regarding how to understand the sudden, recent fatal opioid OD decrease, correlated with Narcan campaigns. The question is how to understand that the drop was only by 216 deaths, when over the same period provision of expert, gold standard treatments in Kentucky was also increasing.
From the AP news report –
The number of fatal overdoses statewide dropped below 2,000, as officials credited a comprehensive response that includes treatment and prevention as well as illegal drug seizures by law enforcement. . . .
Ingram praised funding from state lawmakers for substance abuse treatment and prevention efforts. Kentucky is at the forefront nationally in the per-capita number of residential drug and alcohol treatment beds, Beshear said.
In Kentucky as elsewhere,
in 2023, opioid overdose deaths were reduced by a small number, 216, as a result of desperate, effective, targeted, successful efforts to dramatically increase use of naloxone in community settings for emergency revivals of incidences of high-risk opioid use, the less than 10 percent reduction pointing to a worsening crisis of high-risk opioid use demanding such Narcan campaigns as a form of harm reduction.
A worsening crisis requiring dramatic harm reduction efforts while American experts’ gold standard treatments were increasing in availability and use.
That’s no mystery. We know why that is.
Those answers have been established for years.
