Good news keeps pouring in — relatively speaking, at least — on the opioid-overdose epidemic. “Overdose deaths plummeted in 2024,” the New York Times reported recently : Whereas roughly 81,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses last year, the year before it had been more like 107,000.

Give it another five years, at this rate, things will be back to their somewhat less horrifying pre-COVID routine: More like 6,000 people a month lost in the U.S., as opposed to double that.

The same basic ebbing trend is presenting itself in jurisdictions all over North America: Toronto , Vancouver , Los Angeles , Chicago , Alberta , Washington, D.C. Only four U.S. states didn’t report a decline in deaths between 2023 and 2024, the Christian Science Monitor noted earlier this year .

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