Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) announced on Dec. 9 that deaths by opioid overdose dropped by nearly 16 percent in New York state last year.
New York State saw over 3,000 deaths in 2017. Last year, close to 2,000. That’s the first drop the state’s seen in a decade.
Governor Cuomo has taken an aggressive stance against the opioid crisis and opioid distributors.
“The opioid scheme is as diabolical, as brazen, as obnoxious, and offensive, as I have seen,” Cuomo said in a press conference in September.
Cuomo has established many recovery centers, and President Trump has granted the state hundreds of millions of dollars to fund treatment programs.
New York City was excluded from the governor’s announcement. But according to the city, it also saw its first decline in eight years this August. A rate decrease of three percent.
One thing New York City is focusing on is training ordinary people to save lives with naloxone.
“Naloxone does two things: it reverses the effects, ergo saving a life, and then blocks the effects from 30 to 90 minutes, preventing a second overdose within that period of time,” said Herbert Quiñones from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene at a Naloxone training session on Dec. 13.
As good as the news is for New York, nationally, the rate of opioid deaths has been increasing. The latest data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows a rate increase of 9.6 percent from 2016 to 2017.
