The AP (5/14, Stobbe , Mulvihill ) reports early CDC data released Wednesday indicate “there were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024,” a decline of 27% from the 110,000 in 2023 and the “largest one-year decline ever recorded.” The previous one-year decline was 4% in 2017, “according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.” All states but Nevada and South Dakota saw declines last year, with some of the most significant drops in Ohio, West Virginia, “and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation’s decades-long overdose epidemic.” Among the factors experts cited to explain the decline were the increased availability of naloxone, expanded addiction treatment, a shift in how people use drugs, and the “growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money.” Nevertheless, “annual overdose deaths are higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

ABC News (5/14, Kekatos ) reports this marks the “second year in a row that drug overdose deaths have dropped after year-over-year increases were seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, and researchers say they’re cautiously optimistic about the declines.” The CDC noted “the biggest drop in deaths by drug type was seen in fatalities linked to synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, which fell from 76,282 to 48,422 between 2023 and 2024. Declines were also seen in overdose deaths from psychostimulants, such as methamphetamine;cocaine; and natural or semi-synthetic drugs such as morphine.”

Related Links:

— “US overdose deaths fell 27% last year, the largest one-year decline ever seen,” Mike Stobbe and Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press, May 14, 2025

The Hill (5/13, Migdon ) reports more than 100 House Democrats, led by Reps. Seth Moulton (MA) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL), wrote a letter Tuesday urging HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “to spare a crisis service for LGBTQ youth from federal funding cuts, calling the plan, part of a leaked budget proposal, ‘ill-advised’ and dangerous.” An internal budget document “would eliminate specialized services for LGBTQ youth who contact 988, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, as part of a broader Trump administration effort to slash funding and programs it says are bloating the federal government.” The Democrats said, “Ending this mental health support for youth in distress would devastate a vital resource for some of our nation’s most vulnerable young people.” According to SAMHSA, “the program received an average of 2,100 crisis contacts daily.” Seven Democratic senators sent a similar letter to Kennedy last week.

Related Links:

— “House Democrats: Funding cuts to LGBTQ suicide hotline will have ‘lethal consequences’,” Brooke Migdon, The Hill, May 13, 2025

MedPage Today (5/13, George ) reports, “More time spent sitting or lying down was linked with neurodegeneration and worse cognitive scores in older adults, even among people who were physically active, a 7-year study showed.” Researchers observed that “in cross-sectional models, greater sedentary time was tied to a smaller Alzheimer’s disease-imaging MRI signature and worse episodic memory scores.” They added that “in longitudinal analyses, more sedentary time was associated with faster hippocampal volume shrinkage, and declines in naming scores and processing speed scores.” Investigators concluded, “These findings suggest that above and beyond physical activity level, more sedentary behavior is still worse for brain health and cognition over time.” The study was published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Psychiatric News (5/12) reports a research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics says that “about one-quarter of children in the United States may be living in a household where one or more parents have a substance use disorder.” Researchers calculated national estimates of children “exposed to parental SUDs using data from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.” They found that “nearly 19 million children lived with a parent who met DSM-5 criteria for past-year SUD. Of this total, around 11.3 million children had a parent with mild SUD, while 7.6 million had a parent with moderate to severe SUD.” They observed the “most common parental SUD was alcohol use disorder, which affected more than 12 million children, followed distantly by cannabis use disorder and then prescription medication use disorder.

Related Links:

— “Nearly 19 Million Children May Be Living With a Parent With SUD,” Psychiatric News, May , 2025

The Washington Post (5/12, Docter-Loeb) reports new research published in JAMA Network Open shows that “more U.S. high-schoolers used nicotine pouches – smokeless nicotine powder products – last year than the year before.” The study used data from a 2023-2024 survey of 10,146 youths, revealing that “5.4 percent of 10th- and 12th-graders reported having used nicotine pouches, up from 3 percent the year before. The 10th- and 12th-graders’ use of pouches in the 12 months and 30 days before the surveys also increased year to year.” According to the study, teens who are male, white, and living in rural areas showed higher usage. The study also noted increased dual use with e-cigarettes, “but the sole use of e-cigarettes decreased across a lifetime, as well as in the previous 12 months and past 30 days.”

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)