UPDATE OPIOID CRISIS MICHIGAN: MORE LIES TO HIDE GOLD STANDARD TREATMENT LETHAL FAILURE
Thanks “in part” to Narcan? Check the evidence, do the math, stop fabricating: consistently, large drops in opioid overdose deaths are due entirely to intensive, targeted, successful naloxone campaigns hiding expert treatment failure
by Clark Miller
Published August 22, 2025
From a June 6, 2025 news piece celebrating a drop of about 1,000 in drug overdose deaths in Michigan in 2024 compared to 2023.
- Drug overdose deaths fell by 1,000, or about 34%, in 2024, according to provisional state data.
- That’s an unprecedented drop, and a steeper decrease than the national average
- State leaders, as well as providers, credit opioid settlement dollars that have expanded efforts in prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery
About 1,000 fewer Michiganders died last year of overdoses compared to 2023 — an unprecedented decline in a state where, until recently, opioids claimed someone every four hours.
It’s the third consecutive year of declines. There were 1,927 deaths last year compared to 2,931 in 2023, according to provisional data by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. …
Michigan state and local governments have used some of their opioid settlement funds to distribute more than 1.3 million naloxone kits, with nearly 34,000 reported uses to reverse overdoses and save lives.
That’s a lot of naloxone distributed, and a lot of reversals of what would otherwise have been fatal opioid overdoses.
The largest increase in units distributed, year-by-year, was in 2023, with approximately an additional 146 thousand units, ahead of the large decrease in fatal overdoses in 2024, when an additional approximately 54 thousand units were distributed.
And it’s critically important to understand and to note:
1) Each reported instance of a reversal is a measure of high-risk opioid use, increasingly underestimated as reversals become more common in home and community settings without medical services involvement.
2) Each reported instance of a reversal is the reduction by one of what otherwise almost certainly would have counted toward the number of fatal opioid overdoses for a time span. Because often multiple doses are administered, it would be reasonable to adjust the total impact in prevented fatal overdoses by considering a reduced estimate, for example by 0.5 or even by an order of magnitude, 0.1, to err on the side of underestimate.
3) Each of those reports (or adjusted estimates) counts as direct evidence of the role of naloxone campaigns in reductions of fatal opioid overdoses overall, for a locale, state, and timespan.
From this recent post, estimates of reversals by a single organization involved in Narcan distribution included 6,600 over the period 2020 to 2023, and 2,600 potential OD deaths reversed in fiscal year 2023 (October 1 2022 to end of September 2023).
Even if adjusted by a factor of 0.1 downward to account for multiple administrations and other errors, those numbers more than account for the modest declines in fatal opioid ODs over those periods. And the reported “nearly 34,000 reported uses to reverse overdoses and save lives” adjusted to 3,400 is also many more than needed to account for recent drops in opioid OD deaths including in 2024.
That is, after the effects of naloxone reversals – directly witnessed and reported – there simply are no remaining reduced fatal overdoses to account for.
But let’s take a closer look at the evidence. After all, attributions of reduced deaths to various other factors have come from recognized experts and authorities.
Again from the Bridge MICHIGAN news piece –
The drop is the result of “sustained, strategic investment in prevention, treatment, recovery, and harm-reduction efforts” supported, in part, by the state’s share of funds from national opioid settlements, according to a statement released by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. …
“This is exceptional news,” said Dr. Kanzoni Asabigi, vice president of the Detroit Recovery Project, a Detroit-based nonprofit that provides outpatient support services for substance use and mental health disorders. …
“The easy access to Narcan — to free Narcan — has been really helpful,” Asabigi said, “But there is no single answer.”
The expansion of medication assisted treatment in jails, also funded, in part, by settlement dollars, has provided treatment to inmates and a smoother transition to further treatment when they are released, he said.
Meanwhile, peer-recovery coaches have been able to access emergency rooms to offer help to users, and the expanded availability of drug test strips has helped detect the presence of fentanyl and other particularly dangerous additives in the drug supply, he said.
“All these things — major and minor — add up,” he said.
Michigan’s Attorney General, based on their understanding and critical evaluation of the related research and evidence, assures us that the reductions in fatal opioid overdoses are due to the state’s allocation of public healthcare funds to “prevention, treatment, recovery, and harm-reduction efforts“.
And Dr. Asabigi, who runs a program providing services to high-risk opioid users among others in need, based on his understanding and critical evaluation of the related research and evidence, is certain that fatal opioid ODs have been prevented by “expansion of medication assisted treatment in jails … peer-recovery coaches [who] offer help to users … drug test strips“.
We know that because as determined by Dr. Asabigi, “there is no single answer”.
Let’s see if they’re right!
Prevention
Seriously?
Unspecified “prevention” efforts suddenly provided benefit and reduced fatal opioid ODs in 2024, coincidentally when a dramatic surge in naloxone provision, use and reversals more than accounted for the magnitude of reduced deaths?
Prevention: no research or other supporting evidence provided or available.
In contrast to naloxone campaigns: direct evidence of causal effects more than accounting for all reduced overdose deaths.
Treatment
No.
Expert, gold standard medical and other treatments for problem substance use are established as predicting no benefit, instead harm.
Specifically in Michigan, over periods not confounded by significant efforts to distribute and support Narcan use, opioid OD deaths consistently increased as gold standard treatments were increasingly provided, described in this post from 2019.
From that post –
The latest data, from 2015, showed 142 out of 448 Michigan facilities offered what’s called medication assisted treatment, according to amfAR, a foundation that funds AIDS and HIV prevention research. That’s up considerably from a decade ago, when just 87 of 452 facilities offered such treatment.
That’s an increase by 63 percent over a decade ending in 2015, and would have to be assumed to represent a corresponding increase in numbers of problem opioid users provided opioid substitute MAT.
Over that same period that the medical substitute opioid “fix” for the medically generated opioid crisis had been expanding, opioid-involved inpatient stays – a measure of high-risk opioid use – increasing by about a third.
That’s the opposite of predicted if OST (OAT) was providing benefit by reducing high-risk use.
And in a more recent and overlapping time frame, 2012 to 2017, opioid-related overdose deaths due to heroin increased significantly, a result also invalidating of presumed benefit from increased provision of the medical fix.
Due to heroin, not fentanyl.
In 2017, there were 2,033 overdose deaths involving opioids in Michigan—a rate of 21.2 deaths per 100,000 persons, which is higher than the national rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000 persons. The greatest increase in opioid deaths was seen in cases involving synthetic opioids (mainly fentanyl), from 72 deaths in 2012 to 1,368 in 2017. Deaths involving heroin increased from 263 to 783 deaths in the same 5-year period. Prescription opioid involved deaths also rose from 378 deaths in 2012 to 678 deaths in 2016 but saw a recent decline to 633 deaths in 2017 (Figure 1).
Back to our current post –
Recovery
What does that mean, exactly?
Here’s what “recovery” looks like in Oregon, toward the end of a lengthy post from 2021.
Unspecified “recovery” benefits: no research or other supporting evidence provided or available.
In contrast to naloxone campaigns: direct evidence of causal effects more than accounting for all reduced overdose deaths.
Harm-reduction efforts
Excluding naloxone and the direct evidence of causal effects more than accounting for all reduced overdose deaths?
Unspecified harm-reduction benefits: no research or other supporting evidence provided or available.
It’s none of those.
It’s the desperate necessity for emergency naloxone campaigns as harm reduction against expert, gold standard, lethal “treatments”.
The distortions – lies – messaged to a vulnerable public by constructed experts and authorities in Michigan is a single example of a universal drive in media reporting on recent drops in U.S. opioid overdose deaths.
It is a drive to protect, at any cost, the status, privilege, and control appropriated by members of systems of power and other criminal organizations whose entitlement to those undeserved, unearned responsibilities is driving illness, deaths, and epidemic – the tolerated costs of their sham, lethal expertise and practices.
