NPR UNABLE TO STOP DUMBING DOWN A WORSENING OPIOID CRISIS WITH LETHAL MISINFORMATION
Nothing more reliably predicts harm by public health institutions and worsening epidemics than media accounts that award legitimacy to unexamined claims
by Clark Miller
Published August 29, 2025
The recent All Things Considered segment from National Public Radio out of the University of Western Florida could not be much more clear in conveying to its listeners how to understand the remarkable drop in opioid overdose deaths in Escambia County over past years.
“Since 2023, we have seen an approximate 68% decrease in overdose-related deaths in Escambia County, and a significant reduction in the number of overdose-related emergency calls,” Joey Kerman, supervisor of the CORE program, told WUWF. …
“We have been successful because we meet people where they are and stick with them until they are ready for the next step in their treatment through our community partners,” Kerman said. “They connect CORE patients with not only addiction services and mental health services, but also primary care services.”
The change has been measurable. In 2023, Escambia’s opioid overdose annual age-adjusted death rate was 47 per 100,000 residents. That was nearly double the state rate of 25.3. Just two years later, the county has seen those deaths drop by more than two-thirds.
Just in case there’s any doubt about what is working and saving lives – the most critically important question that we need answers to – here’s the National Public Radio subheader –
The reporting provides additional information about the incredible accomplishment in Florida – for a wider public and communities continually reeling from signs of a persistently worsening epidemic – using insights from “County officials” and touching anecdotes to determine just what treatment modalities of “free recovery program” the remarkable drop can be attributed to.
The calls come at all hours. Sometimes it is a young person barely out of high school. Sometimes it is someone who has been using for decades. They all have one thing in common: They are looking for a way out.
Escambia County’s Coordinated Opioid Recovery (CORE) program has been that way out for 400 people. County officials say it is reshaping the local fight against the opioid crisis. …
“We have been successful because we meet people where they are and stick with them until they are ready for the next step in their treatment through our community partners,” Kerman said. “They connect CORE patients with not only addiction services and mental health services, but also primary care services.”
Huh! So CORE can claim credit for the remarkable drop in opioid deaths by linking users to the very same programs that have been available and expanding to provide “treatment” over the decades of a persistently worsening crisis, but this time, in this case, in Escambia County … it worked?
Maybe we should think about these claims, starting with what’s being left out. There’s a lot.
A comparable, large (70 percent) reduction in opioid OD deaths occurred over the same time frame in Wisconsin, where tribal members involved directly in services and changes in services attributed the change to a focused, targeted, resource-intensive campaign to train on and distribute the potentially fatal overdose reversing drug naloxone where it’s needed most – to laypersons in the community.
And it turns out, in short, that is what has been happening everywhere, nationally and across diverse locales, consistently. After years of increasing dispensing of medical cures and expanded access to “rehab” and “addiction treatment“, deaths kept rising … until, only when, and corresponding in timing with those campaigns. See, for example, the list of links in this recent post.
It must be that Escambia County is an anomaly, a lone outlier, the first instance of medical and addiction treatment programs providing benefit, ever, as explained by CORE and NPR, thanks to a “recovery” program. .
Let’s take a look.
Starting with a post here from February of last year (2024), from which we will learn a bit more about CORE.
From that post –
You wouldn’t know it, though.
Because here’s just how successful the campaign starting the prior year to dispense the addiction treatment medicine buprenorphine (Suboxone) has been already –
With initial funding of $600,000, Escambia joined CORE in the summer of 2022. It’s one of a few counties chosen to pilot the program, which is a comprehensive network of addiction and opioid treatment.
Chief Torsell says after about eight months of organizing, the program took off very quickly.
He noted the successful use of medication-assisted therapy (MAT), improved relationships with local hospitals and other partners, and wraparound services delivered by nurses and EMTs on staff. Also, as individuals complete the addiction treatment component, and declare the program to be life-saving, the word is spreading.
“One of the things that we see as a result of that is as people that have addiction therapy and mental health issues gain that trust and have others that are friends of theirs that let them know, ‘Hey, there’s this program; you can trust these people. They’re here for you. They’re going to help you,’” he began. “Now we have more people reaching out than we can keep up with.”
I guess that’s called “putting a positive face on things”, right?
A new MAT program began successfully providing buprenorphine to high-risk opioid users, some of them cured, and spreading the word, “declaring the program to be life-saving”.
We have no idea whether lethal opioid overdoses declined over the period, and if we had that data, we would be attributing that change to differential effects of naloxone campaigns. That’s because that’s how that works – consistently, any moderation in incidence of lethal overdoses have been more than accounted for by that confounding factor, while buprenorphine and methadone (MAT) are established as driving increased high risk opioid use and a worsening epidemic.
What we do know, with certainty, is that while naloxone saves predictably confound interpretation of outcomes based on overdose deaths, a more reliable measure of “treatment” outcomes is nonfatal overdoses, always representing high-risk opioid use, moderation of high-risk use the only way that MAT opioids like buprenorphine and methadone can be presumed to have treatment benefit.
So, we’d have to say that the 19 percent surge in opioid overdose EMT calls belies, that is gives the lie to, the claims of benefit from dispensing opioids that are established as fueling the lethal epidemic.
There are some elements of truth in the report, though, including the very strong likelihood that beneficiaries of free, doctor-dispensed buprenorphine are sharing the word on the streets. You can bet they are. And,
“Now we have more people reaching out than we can keep up with.”
While bupe has never been supported by evidence as saving lives or providing benefit for opioid dependence, it is well understood and established as functioning as reliably available commodity and currency in street economies of illicit, high-risk opioid use, now traded for cash or fentanyl, for heroin not so long ago.
It was as predictable that high risk opioid use and overdoses would surge in Escambia County as it was that that worsening opioid outcomes would occur in Medicaid expansion states where the free bupe fueled high-risk use of more potent opioids.
That’s how it works, has for decades. While deaths mount.
Back to our current post –
And it turns out – as detailed in this post from 2020 – that those “proven”, gold standard medical cures for the opioid crisis that CORE hooks high-risk users up with were expanding rapidly as early as 2005 and continuously after that.
While opioid overdoses and fatal overdoses mounted.
Elsewhere around Florida, described in this post, counties investing in Narcan campaigns saw decreases in opioid OD deaths while others did not.
From that post –
From this report –
Naloxone, a medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose, has undoubtedly saved countless lives in recent years. Its wider availability in many communities has provided a critical safety net for individuals at risk of overdose. However, it’s crucial to recognize that the successful use of naloxone may inadvertently mask the true scope of the opioid crisis.
While death totals are often used as a key indicator of the crisis’s severity, these figures certainly underrepresent the actual number of opioid overdoses that occur, as many are reversed through naloxone administration.
That bears repeating.
However, it’s crucial to recognize that the successful use of naloxone may inadvertently mask the true scope of the opioid crisis.
While death totals are often used as a key indicator of the crisis’s severity, these figures certainly underrepresent the actual number of opioid overdoses that occur, as many are reversed through naloxone administration.
And elsewhere in Florida, in Palm Beach County, from this May, 2025 post –
The local headline says it all.
That dramatic drop was predictable once the Florida locales focused resources on getting Narcan into communities where needed, along with trainings as in other locales consistently.
And predictable that high risk “drug use” and overdose continue to mount.
The number of people who died from an opioid in Palm Beach County in 2024 was down 46% from 2023, something non-profit leaders credit to Narcan, the overdose reversal drug.
“At the end of the day we want to save as many lives as possible, but we want to ultimately restore lives,” Alex Price, the CEO of Project Opioid said. “It’s not enough just to save lives, but it must start there.” ..
Price says while the number of overdose deaths is declining, the number of people overdosing continues to increase as does the number of fentanyl overdoses.
[Emphasis added]
Back to our current post –
What about Escambia County?
From the same January 22, 2024 WUWF NPR report headlined in a previous report on a continuing “alarming number of overdoses” –
And because it’s impossible to track citizen-administered Narcan, which is now widely available for public use, the opioid overdose problem likely is worse.
[emphasis added]
And from a local abc News affiliate, more about intensified training and use of Narcan in Escambia County where, as elsewhere ( here for example) the community saturation and use of Narcan to reverse otherwise fatal opioid overdoses has become normalized and pervasive enough that there is concern that it facilitates high-risk opoid use, masks a persistently worsening crisis of high-risk use by reducing deaths without addressing what is driving overdoses, and enables hypoxia-induced damage to users’ brains.
“In Escambia County, just this week alone, there’s been 39 [overdoses] that EMS has responded to,” Smith says.
“Right now, we’re seeing an alarming trend in overdoses with girls 10-19,” Escambia County Emergency Manager Travis Tompkins says.
The District One Medical Examiner’s Office reports more than 200 fatal overdoses from Escambia to Walton County, just this year. And it’s not even December yet.
“Unfortunately, Escambia County has the highest OD rate per capita in the state of Florida,” says Tompkins. …
“Narcan is definitely helping in the community,” Tompkins says. …
But while overdose deaths are declining, Narcan is now providing a way for folks to survive without reporting their OD. Or worse, it’s becoming a crutch for those struggling to choose recovery.
“If it becomes…everyone has Narcan now,” Smith says. “‘So I can go do drugs and I’m going to be okay because my buddy has Narcan in his glovebox.’ That’s kind of a scary thing for me.”
That is to say, in Escambia County, as consistently in all other locales,
it has been naloxone campaigns entirely accounting for reductions in opioid overdose deaths and reducing harm established as predictable from the types of “recovery” and medical services provided by CORE.
In its coverage of a persistently worsening opioid crisis, NPR has set a standard of sorts – for levels of cowardly and impaired “reporting” (also here and here and here) in servitude to the expert, political, and authoritarian classes rewarding their role and service in collusion for mutual protection.
