Drugs, Overdose, Hope - North Carolina and Nevada

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Drug overdose has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Fentanyl – a synthetic opioid mass produced in Mexico and smuggled across the border – drove the increasing number of fatalities ever higher. But there’s a good news story that hasn’t been widely reported… Drug-related deaths fell year on year from 2023 to 2024 by around 25%. In some states, the decline was even more dramatic - North Carolina was one of them. In a two-part series for Assignment, Linda Pressly first visits the state capital of Raleigh to report on some of the reasons why fewer people are dying from illicit narcotics.

But drug-related fatalities haven't fallen everywhere in the US. In Nevada, those mortality statistics have continued to tick up. In the second in this Assignment series, Linda travels to Las Vegas and Reno to find out why this desert state is bucking the trend.

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from Assignment, investigations and journeys into the heart of global events.

(Image: Kayla, a former fentanyl user and now a client of a LEAD programme (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) in North Carolina that diverts substance abusers away from crime. Credit: Tim Mansel/BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:05.5	Thanks for downloading the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:10.0	This is a two-part series for assignment, drugs, overdose, hope.
0:14.8	Now, back in early 2023, producer Tim Mansel and I visited Mexico and the US to report on the fentanyl epidemic.
0:23.3	What we found was devastating. Fast forward and in 2024 some surprising but very welcome news
0:30.9	began to appear about how the number of overdose deaths in the US had dropped quite radically.
0:38.0	Wow, I thought, how come?
0:40.5	I began to follow the blog of a street drug scientist at the University of North Carolina,
0:45.9	Dr. Nabaron Dasgupta.
0:48.1	Once we were commissioned to make this assignment series
0:50.7	about the reasons why fewer people were dying,
0:53.8	Dr. Nab, as he's often called,
0:55.7	was generous with his time and expertise. Ashley Worth at North Carolina's Department of Health
1:01.6	and Human Services also offered invaluable insights. In Nevada, where we recorded the second
1:08.0	assignment, initial conversations I had with Dr. Carla Wagner and Morgan Green,
1:13.2	both in the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada in Reno,
1:17.0	gave us plenty of food for thought.
1:19.4	So here they are, two documentaries, one theme.
1:23.2	Drugs, overdose, hope.
1:25.9	You're listening to Assignment for the documentary on the BBC World Service.
1:30.1	I'm Linda Presley.
1:32.0	It's a tragic fact that the biggest killer of American adults under 45 is drug overdose.
	...

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