Almost a decade in the California Fentanyl crisis, public health experts are finding reasons for optimism and concern.
Fatal opioid overdose in the state have finally retreated from maximum records, with around 6,700 deaths recorded in the first half of 2024, a drop of approximately 16% since the 2023 peak.
But doctors, researchers and some Los Angeles County officials warn that many key measures accredited by turning the tide are in danger. President Trump has reduced federal funds for addiction treatment programs, with some services in Los Angeles County in the cutting block.
The preliminary data of the County shows around 1,300 fatal overdose caused by fentanil and other opioids until mid -2024, about 300 deaths less compared to a similar time in 2023.
Several experts said that the emphasis on reducing damage, including the greater availability of the overdose reversion drug, naloxone and fentanyl test kits, was behind the improvement.
But the money destined to support such efforts is now drying.
A spokesman for the Los Angeles County Public Health Department said federal cuts included more than $ 45 million in damage reduction grants. Some funds for the prevention of substance abuse were also ended in mid -contract due to changes in the federal budget, said the spokesman.
“As we are progressing in overdose numbers, now it is not time to disin,” said the statement of the Department of Public Health.
At the same time, local authorities are reimbursing a more traditional approach to combat crime, which includes the search for longest prison sentences against some drug criminals.
The Californians voted to approve Proposition 36 during the last electoral cycle, imposing stricter sanctions for repeated robbery and crimes involving fentanyl.
The Dist. Atty county. Nathan Hochman campaigned last year on the drug crisis, promising to hold “fentanyl poisoners/murderers completely for his actions to spread this poison in all our communities.”
“Each fentanyl trafficker will be warned about the severe repercussions to his freedom if they kill a person with his poison,” said the Hochman campaign website.
Damage reduction workers in Santa Ana distribute the Naloxone Overdose Reversion Medication and syringes to customers who use opioids.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Ricardo García, the Public Defender of the Los Angeles County, said that the renewed emphasis on the punishment for drug crimes feels like a flashback for when long sentences for the mass imprisonment fed by crack.
“It is something we have seen before it rises very fast and, often, has a devastating effect on poor communities, black and brown communities, and frankly, taxpayers, such as the cost of dealing with this overpolration,” Garcia said.
The parallel to the era of the crack are worrisome for many who work in the first line of the current crisis, from the dehumanizing rhetoric, which describes fentanyl users as “zombies”, to punitive policies of sentence.
Shoshanna Scholar, Director of Damage Reduction for County, said that the key to saving lives is clear: increasing the distribution efforts of naloxone and overdose prevention in high -risk communities.
“In the last 25 years, there has been real recognition with the use of substances and see it as a chronic condition, in opposition to the bad behavior that requires punishment to change it,” said Scholar. “We know that there is another way and it actually works to reduce the number of dead people.”
Since 2023, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has invested more than $ 1 billion in subsidies for the distribution of naloxone, fentanyl test strips and other initiatives against overcrows. Naloxone, also known as Narcan, is now available for purchase for all California residents through the Calrx initiative for $ 24.
At the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival of this year, End Overdose, an organization based in Burbank, had a stand near the EDM scenarios of the festival that offered Naloxone training, free doses and a variety of booty.
In the position, two attendees to the twenty -year -old festival, Mimi and Lily, who asked to be identified only by their names to discuss drug use, said they had been taking all possible precautions for fear that something could be sold with fentanil.
“Honestly, we learn more from Reddit and our parents. They always tell me to be careful with fentanil,” Mimi said. “It reminds me a lot when people promote abstinence when it comes to safe sex, when they really should talk about condoms and birth control. Because, in any case, people are going to make drugs, so you should make sure you are doing it safely.”
Dr. Brian Hurley, medical director of the County who supervises the addiction treatment initiatives, said that the implementation of harder penalties for drug users can increase the risk of overdose, since people are more likely to use alone and in secret.
“It becomes more difficult to involve people in an open, honest and neutral conversation about whether they are ready to stop using, if they are ready to try an interim home or take a refuge bed. All these things take people out of the street in a way that advances what I think that most people really want,” said Hurley.
He and others pointed out that even with difficult crime policies of the 1980s and 90s, Crack cocaine consumption has never left. And despite the fact that local authorities say for years that arrests and prosecutions alone are not the solution, experts said it is still difficult for those who need treatment to find help.
Devon O'Malley, on the left, an administrator of cases of damage reduction with the Venice Family Clinic, delivers the Narcan Nasol Aerosol to Ken Newark, 63, in Tongva Park in Santa Monica.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
“People are pressing more severe and more arrest sanctions, but this is how people use a drug they don't want to use,” said Dr. Ricky Bluthenthal, a public health professor at the USC. “In general terms, imprisonment is not a place where people improve.”
That message, however, is contrary to the hard line approach that is now driven by the White House. Trump has cited fentanyl deaths as a reason for tariffs against China, a source of chemical ingredients used in clandestine laboratories, and suggested drones attacks in Mexican drug cartels. Trump has also declared to Fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction and asked to give drug traffickers the death penalty
For Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of UC San Francisco who investigates public health and drug use, it is difficult not to see the story repeating.
The professor, who recently published an article about “moral panic” about drug use, said elected officials have been more concerned about optics and approval ratings than addressing the underlying causes of addiction.
“We are afraid of this drug, and we are afraid of the people who use drugs,” Ciccarone said. “When we are afraid, the natural human response is to seek security. Who can make us feel more secure? The police and the courts.”
The recent trend in overdose deaths at least offers a ray of hope, he added, even if no one can agree on the best way to follow.
“I recognize that as a human impulse of fear, urgency and panic, that we must do something,” he said. “I have heard this police saying: 'We have to be seen as doing something,' and I say: 'Ok, but I don't get worse.'”
