New data from the CDC this week shows a significant drop in drug overdose deaths, down nearly 17% year over year, from approximately 113,000 to just over 94,000.

It's a rare bit of good news after decades of rising fatalities. Nationwide, overdose deaths have nearly quadrupled since 2002 and spiked to record highs during the pandemic.

But the root causes of this decline are still unclear.

To unpack it all, we're joined now by Brian Mann, he's NPR's National Addiction Correspondent.

Brian, welcome back to the News Hour. Thanks for joining us.

So these are encouraging numbers for sure, but for perspective,

even with that drop, annual overdose deaths are still above 90,000. That would be a record high

any year before 2020. So just remind us, how did those numbers get so high in the first place?

Yeah, you know, so we had this terrible double hit. The COVID pandemic came Omna and it disrupted addiction treatment and public health programs nationwide.

And at the same time, fentanyl landed this very toxic, very powerful street opioid that comes from Mexico and China. And those together, we saw in some years a 30% increase in deaths.

And so to see now this big shift to a 17% decline year over year,

that's a big downward trend.

So we know the Biden administration is taking partial credit for it, right?

And they point to their efforts to distribute naloxone,

the medicine that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose. They also point to their success

disrupting global drug trafficking networks. Did that play a role in this decline? Do we know

what's behind it? So there is a mystery here. I mean, this is such a huge decline. It's unprecedented

in the history of drug addiction in America to see a drop this fast. But most of the researchers and frontline public health workers I talk to do think naloxone is reversing a lot of overdoses that would otherwise be fatal. That's playing a role. There has been an immense effort to target the cartels, and there's some sign that the fentanyl reaching American streets may be weaker and maybe a little bit less available.

So these are just some of the responses that the people I'm talking to say are really working, saving at this point tens of thousands of lives.

There are some pockets of data that seem to be bucking the trend, though, right?

Where are we not seeing progress?

And why not?

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