MOUNT HOPE, WV (WOAY)- “There’s nobody that works harder than the recovery community in West Virginia,” said Jeff Miller, Program Director for Brian’s Safehouse.
Overdose deaths have fallen by 27% last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s the largest one-year decline ever reported. West Virginia is one of the states with the biggest drops in overdose deaths.
“This is a positive in a long battle,” said Miller. “And so any time you have a positive, you’ve got to give the credit for this to the people that have worked in the recovery community, the industry. There are a lot of good programs out there. There’s a lot of compassion. You have a lot of good counselors, people in recovery helping other people in recovery. So those people get their credit for numbers like that.”
The CDC says that only 80,000 people nationwide died by overdose in 2024 as opposed to 110,000 in 2023. However, they are still higher annually than they were before the pandemic in 2020. Overdose deaths are also still the leading cause of death for people ages 18 to 44 years old.
Miller says that while we have these good numbers now, there were still many years we didn’t have that, and many people lost their lives from it. Although he did say one of the biggest reasons for the decline is that many of the new drugs are no longer attractive.
“The drugs that have come into our country are not the types of drugs that people are attracted to that may look like fun,” explained Miller. “They’re marketed to people who were already addicted. This next generation is not so attracted to the drugs that are coming up.”
While this brings hope for the future, there’s still work to be done.
