The Atlantic Gift Article – Drug deaths are finally falling—but the cause may be far outside of U.S. policy makers’ control. “For two decades, the United States and Canada have struggled with a drug epidemic. From 2003 to 2022, annual overdose deaths in the United States rose from less than 26,000 to nearly 108,000—becoming the leading nonmedical cause of death, surpassing car accidents and gun violence combined. In Canada, overdose deaths increased almost tenfold in the same period. In both countries, the surge in deaths was supercharged by “synthetic” opioids such as fentanyl, the ultra-potent, lab-made narcotic that has come to dominate the supply of hard drugs. Then, sometime in 2023, something miraculous happened: Death rates started dropping. In Canada, opioid-overdose deaths declined 17 percent in 2024, then continued falling sharply in the first six months of 2025 (the most recent months for which data are available). In America, preliminary data indicate that total drug deaths fell from their peak of just shy of 113,000 in the year ending August 2023 to about 73,000 in the year ending August 2025. Although the numbers are still too high, the public-health community has responded to the decrease with jubilation—and confusion. Overdoses had been rising inexorably for 20 years. What changed? A new paper, published earlier this month by a group of drug-policy scholars in the journal Science, presents a novel theory. The paper’s authors attribute the reversal not to any American or Canadian policy, but to a sudden fentanyl “drought,” which they say may have its causes not in North America, but in China…”
See also Henry Grabar in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Great Crime Decline Is Happening All Across the Country. “There are many plausible explanations for the recent crime downturn: sharper policing strategy, more police overtime, low unemployment, the lure of digital life, the post-pandemic return to normalcy. Each of these surely played a role. But only one theory can match the decline in its scope and scale: that the massive, post-pandemic investment in local governments deployed during the Biden administration, particularly through the American Rescue Plan Act, delivered a huge boost to the infrastructure and services of American communities—including those that suffered most from violent crime. That spending may be responsible for our current pax urbana.”
See also The New York Times Gift Article – What’s Behind the Staggering Drop in the Murder Rate? No One Knows for Sure. A decline in homicides across the country was a stunning reversal after crime rose during the pandemic.
