More than 2,800 Michigan residents died of drug overdose deaths in 2023, according to state data.
That’s a lot, but it also marks a significant decline from a 2021 peak during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Michigan’s overdose death rate is now below the national average, and declining significantly faster than national averages as well. And if provisional trends from this year continue, Michigan is on track to return to about 2015-overdose death levels.
Stubborn racial disparities remain. In 2023, Black and Native American Michiganders were over two times more likely to die from drugs than white residents. But provisional data from this year again show significant progress in closing those gaps, said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive.
“But if we look that preliminary 2024 data, [it] does in fact appear that there is quite a decline in those racial disparities as well, both for African-American residents as well as for Native American residents,” Bagdasarian said. “And so if this data holds true, when we finalize our 2024 data, it is a lot of good news. Something is going right.”
So what’s “going right?” According to Bagdasarian, complex trends like drug use and overdoses are hard to pin down to just a small number of factors. Still, she’s convinced these numbers show the state’s approach to the opioid crisis — funded in part by over $800 million in national opioid settlement money — is paying dividends.
One pillar of the state’s approach is “harm reduction,” Bagdasarian said. That means, to some extent at least, reaching people who substance use disorders where they are, and providing the tools to reduce harm while also urging treatment and recovery.
One of the state’s major harm reduction initiatives has been targeted provision of the opioid overdose-reversing drug Naloxone to areas with the highest need.
“We’ve been really successful and very deliberate about our naloxone distribution. We’ve increased and expanded that distribution every year. And we've been able to do that using our opioid settlement funds,” Bagdasarian said.
Another key harm reduction component the state has escalated: providing test strips so that people who use drugs can test them to see if they’re contaminated with more potent and dangerous substances, such as fentanyl or xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer.
But prevention and education, as well as treatment and recovery, are equally important parts of the larger approach, Bagdasarian said. One key item the state is pushing right now: “There is so much contamination in our street drugs right now."
“If you are buying pills and powders from the street, you have no idea what those pills and powders contain,” Bagdasarian said. “That's one piece of awareness and education that we're really focusing on.”
