OPIOID CRISIS REALITY CHECK: AS DEATHS DROP, JUST 8 PERCENT OF SURVEYED PHILADELPHIANS SEE IMPROVEMENT, 40 PERCENT SAY IT’S WORSENING
Accurate perceptions of surveyed Philadelphia residents dispel attempts by America’s expert medical/media collusion to fabricate gains against the worsening crisis
by Clark Miller
Published July 11, 2025
The survey of about 2300 city residents was conducted for Pew Charitable Trust by an independent research group over January 1 to March 10 of 2025, and compared in Pew’s reporting to a previous survey from 2019.
Conclusion
Although the recent decline in overdose deaths in Philadelphia is a promising development, the relief is not felt equally by all residents, and more Philadelphians are affected by the opioid crisis now than they were before the pandemic. At the same time, an increasing number of residents recognize opioid use disorder as a chronic health condition that requires appropriate medical care, rather than punitive measures, to help people work toward recovery. The insights that Philadelphians shared in the 2025 Pew poll underscore the ongoing challenges that this pressing public health issue poses for the city and its residents—and highlight the need for continued efforts to improve conditions citywide.
That “promising development” of a recent decline in opioid overdose deaths in Philadelphia (actually representing a worsening of the crisis, the reductions clearly all attributable to emergency reversals by Narcan, not due to treatments for or gains against high-risk opioid use) has not been fully appreciated by the Philadelphians surveyed, as reported here about a third of whom saw no change in the severity of the epidemic, 40 percent viewed it as worsening, and just 8 percent perceived things as improving.
Pew ignored those findings, lying by selection and by the distortion that “the relief is not felt equally by all residents”, an interesting way of reporting that no more than 8 percent see signs of relief.
It would require effort to not understand their perceptions.
Philadelphia residents seem very unlikely to have escaped exposure, by saturation of local news and their experiences, to the grim threat and public health challenges posed by street economies of illicit and prescribed opioids and other drugs, and signs of intensive community-based outreach campaigns to flood communities with fatal overdose-reversing naloxone along with public service messaging heightening that awareness, the desperate campaigns made necessary by increasing prevalence of high-risk opioid use.
An NPR headline and news piece capture the situation. Someone knocking on your door, offering free naloxone kits, and explaining why is a reality check and would have to reinforce what city residents are likely to already be aware of.
That naloxone-bearing outreach worker a reality check as are posted reminders throughout the city.
And as much as news coverage has described the illicit opioid and other high-risk drug use economies of hotspots like the Kensington district and others, Philadelphians may well be aware that America’s gold standard medical treatment for compulsive opioid use, Suboxone, is one of the most commonly available and exchanged drugs in those high-risk illicit economies, most commonly as currency for fentanyl.
As they may well also be aware from regularly appearing investigative reports, that America’s addiction treatment industry is a scam that at best provides no benefit, commonly operating in ways that increase risk of harm or death.
They would have learned that directly if a friend or family member had accessed treatment, with predictable outcomes.
That vast majority almost certain to have become aware of the signs of a desperate, intense naloxone campaign that began saving lives might accurately and naturally discern that those dramatically increasing reversals point to increasing high-risk drug use as driving the necessity for those campaigns, that is, point to failure of gold standard expert treatments to stem the high-risk use.
They may likely see around them the same signs described by front line service providers and others in Columbus, Ohio, where “A fentanyl antidote is saving lives. But it isn’t ending the fentanyl crisis“.
Surveyed Philadelphians have lived through generation of the opioid epidemic by America’s top medical, public health, science and media institutions, through decades of expert-driven dosing of Americans with SSRIs that treat no condition, through the expert medical and public health creation of and response to COVID. Having gained immunity to the persistent lies of top experts, they come naturally to an accurate view of a worsening drug crisis, the evidence all around them in their wasted cities and on a national crime scene.
