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There were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024 than the year before the largest one-year decline ever recorded. An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. Thats down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023. The CDC has been collecting comparable data for 45 years. The previous largest one-year drop was 4% in 2018, according to the agencys National Center for Health Statistics. All but two states saw declines last year, with Nevada and South Dakota experiencing small increases. Some of the biggest drops were in Ohio, West Virginia and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation’s decades-long overdose epidemic. Experts say more research needs to be done to understand what drove the reduction, but they mention several possible factors. Among the most cited: Increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Expanded addiction treatment. Shifts in how people use drugs. The growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money. The number of at-risk Americans is shrinking, after waves of deaths in older adults and a shift in teens and younger adults away from the drugs that cause most deaths. Still, annual overdose deaths are higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, the CDC noted that overdoses are still the leading cause of death for people 18-44 years old, underscoring the need for ongoing efforts to maintain this progress. Some experts worry that the recent decline could be slowed or stopped by reductions in federal funding and the public health workforce, or a shift away from the strategies that seem to be working. Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal, said Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a drug policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco. The provisional numbers are estimates of everyone who died of overdoses in the U.S., including noncitizens. That data is still being processed, and the final numbers can sometimes differ a bit. But its clear that there was a huge drop last year. Experts note that there have been past moments when U.S. overdose deaths seemed to have plateaued or even started to go down, only to rise again. That happened in 2018. But there are reasons to be optimistic. Naloxone has become more widely available, in part because of the introduction of over-the-counter versions that dont require prescriptions. Meanwhile, drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacy chains and other businesses have settled lawsuits with state and local governments over the painkillers that were a main driver of overdose deaths in the past. The deals over the last decade or so have promised about $50 billion over time, with most of it required to be used to fight addiction. Another settlement that would be among the largest, with members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma agreeing to pay up to $7 billion, could be approved this year. The money, along with federal taxpayer funding, is going to a variety of programs, including supportive housing and harm reduction efforts, such as providing materials to test drugs for fentanyl, the biggest driver of overdoses now. But what each state will do with that money is currently at issue. States can either say, We won, we can walk away in the wake of the declines or they can use the lawsuit money on naloxone and other efforts, said Regina LaBelle, a former acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. She now heads an addiction and public policy program at Georgetown University. President Donald Trumps administration views opioids as largely a law enforcement issue and as a reason to step up border security. That worries many public health leaders and advocates. We believe that taking a public health approach that seeks to support not punish people who use drugs is crucial to ending the overdose crisis, said Dr. Tamara Olt, an Illinois woman whose 16-year-old son died of a heroin overdose in 2012. She is now executive director of Broken No Moore, an advocacy organization focused on substance use disorder. Olt attributes recent declines to the growing availability of naloxone, work to make treatment available, and wider awareness of the problem. Kimberly Douglas, an Illinois woman whose 17-year-old son died of an overdose in 2023, credited the growing chorus of grieving mothers. Eventually people are going to start listening. Unfortunately, it’s taken 10-plus years. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Mike Stobbe and Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
A few lines of text in a sweeping new bill moving through Congress could have major implications for the next decade of artificial intelligence. Trump is pushing Republicans in Congress to pass one, big beautiful bill, which hinges on deep cuts to popular federal assistance programs like Medicaid and SNAP to drum up hundreds of billions of dollars for tax cuts and defense spending. Among the bills other controversies, it could stop states from enforcing any laws that regulate AI for the next 10 years. No state . . . may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the bill stipulates. The proposal to hamstring states regulatory power popped up in the House Energy and Commerce Committees portion of the massive budget reconciliation mega-bill. The reason? House Republicans on the committee want to allocate $500 million to modernize federal IT tech, including through the deployment of state-of-the-art commercial AIbut theyre worried about regulators getting in the way of federal AI adoption. In order to streamline the federal governments ability to readily adopt AI into its systems, the bill sidelines one potential check on its power: the states. States are effective tech regulatorsunlike the federal government The bills language is broad, protecting AI models and systems through a moratorium on state-level legal challenges, but also including any automated decision systema catchall category the legislation defines as any computational process that issues a simplified output and replaces human decision-making. That expansive description means the moratorium could prevent states from regulating all kinds of everyday automated processes and algorithms that wouldnt fall under a narrower definition of artificial intelligence. As Trumps political opponents raise alarm over the broader reconciliation bills proposed cuts to Medicaid, some House Democrats slammed the overlooked AI provision as a giant gift to Big Tech companies. This ban will allow AI companies to ignore consumer privacy protections, let deepfakes spread, and allow companies to profile and deceive consumers using AI, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) said. A moratorium on state-level AI regulation might not sound like a huge deal, but states are often the only check on the tech industrys power over consumers. From social media algorithms to AI, the federal government has largely failed to regulate emerging technology over the last decade. States have picked up the slack, with powerful laws like the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in Illinois ensnaring Meta over the companys mishandling of facial recognition data. States have already stepped in to regulate AI. Last year, Tennessee became the first state to protect musicians from AI systems that would copy their voice without permission. In Colorado, a new law designed to protect residents from discrimination within systems relying on AI just survived a challenge from opponents. Budget reconciliation offers a fast track for some bills Beyond the small provision on AI, the budget reconciliation bill would deliver on a number of the presidents signature priorities, like funding ongoing construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico and extending tax cuts from Trumps first term beyond 2025. In its first 100 days, the Trump administration leaned heavily on executive orders and other unilateral actions that didnt require cooperation from Congress. With Trumps early blitz of executive actionsincluding sharp limits to immigration and deep cuts to the federal workforcenow tangled up in court challenges, the administration has turned to Republicans in Congress to enact other parts of his agenda. In Congress, a special process known as budget reconciliation allows some kinds of legislation to pass with a simple majority vote in the Senate, bypassing the need to whip up 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. For an administration with little interest in the slow, compromise-driven work necessary to craft bipartisan legislation, a budget reconciliation bill offers an alternative path, though one that only applies to some bills related to spending, taxes, and the debt limit. Will the bill pass? With the committee markup sessions wrapped up, House Republicans are aiming to push the mega-bill through its next phase of scrutiny on Friday. With such a large legislative package covering so much ground, disagreements on any one of its component parts could spell the bills demise. While the relatively tiny piece of significant AI deregulation within the bill is unlikely to be a sticking point, Senate Republicans have expressed concerns over the bills failure to reduce federal spending. President Trump is likely to dial up the pressure if the bill clears the House, but there are signs that without major changes, the big, beautiful bill could sink before it leaves the harbor.
Category:
E-Commerce
It wouldnt make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat. But thats exactly what the Trump administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm. For 50 years, the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat. Most species on the brink of extinction are on the list because there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats have been paved over, burned or transformed. Habitat protection is essential for their survival. The golden-cheeked warbler breeds only in Texas, primarily in Texas Hill Country. It has been losing habitat as development expands in the region. [Photo: Steve Maslowski/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] As an ecologist and a law professor, we have spent our entire careers working to understand the law and science of helping imperiled species thrive. We recognize that the rule change the Trump administration quietly proposed could green-light the destruction of protected species habitats, making it nearly impossible to protect those endangered species. The public, which has long supported the Endangered Species Act, has until May 19, 2025, to comment on the proposal. The legal gambit The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, bans the take of any endangered species of fish or wildlife, which includes harming protected species. Since 1975, regulations have defined harm to include habitat destruction that kills or injures wildlife. Developers and logging interests challenged that definition in 1995 in a Supreme Court case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon. However, the court ruled that the definition was reasonable and allowed federal agencies to continue using it. In short, the law says take includes harm, and under the existing regulatory definition, harm includes indirect harm through habitat destruction. Critical habitat throughout the U.S., including many coastlines and mountain areas. Note: Alaska, Hawaii not to scale. [Map: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] The Trump administration is seeking to change that definition of harm in a way that leaves out habitat modification. This narrowed definition would undo the most significant protections granted by the Endangered Species Act. Why habitat protection matters Habitat protection is the single most important factor in the recovery of endangered species in the United States far more consequential than curbing direct killing alone. A 2019 study examining the reasons species were listed as endangered between 1975 and 2017 found that only 17% were primarily threatened by direct killing, such as hunting or poaching. That 17% includes iconic species such as the red wolf, American crocodile, Florida panther and grizzly bear. In contrast, a staggering 81% were listed because of habitat loss and degradation. The Chinook salmon, island fox, southwestern willow flycatcher, desert tortoise and likely extinct ivory-billed woodpecker are just a few examples. Globally, a 2022 study found that habitat loss threatene more species than all other causes combined. [Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-NDSource: Matthias Leu, et al, 2019 Get the data Embed Download image Created with Datawrapper] As natural landscapes are converted to agriculture or taken over by urban sprawl, logging operations and oil and gas exploration, ecosystems become fragmented and the space that species need to survive and reproduce disappears. Currently, more than 107 million acres of land in the U.S. are designated as critical habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed species. Industries and developers have called for changes to the rules for years, arguing it has been weaponized to stop development. However, research shows species worldwide are facing an unprecedented threat from human activities that destroy natural habitat. Under the proposed change, development could be accelerated in endangered species habitats. Gutting the Endangered Species Act The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act. It is also fundamentally incompatible with the purpose Congress wrote into the act: to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved [and] to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species. It contradicts the Supreme Court precedent, and it would destroy the acts habitat protections. Northern spotted owls, like these fledglings, living in old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest are listed as threatened species because of habitat loss. [Photo: Tom Kogut/USFS, CC BY] Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has argued that the recent de-extinction of dire wolves by changing 14 genes in the gray wolf genome means that America need not worry about species protection because technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk. But altering an existing species to look like an extinct one is both wildly expensive and a paltry substitute for protecting existing species. The Catalina Island fox is endemic to Catalina Island. Habitat loss, diseases introduced by domestic dogs, and predators have diminished the population of these small foxes to threatened status. [Photo: Catalina Island Conservancy/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA] The administration has also refused to conduct the required analysis of the environmental impact that changing the definition could have. That means the American people wont even know the significance of this change to threatened and endangered species until its too late, though if approved it will certainly end up in court. The ESA is saving species Surveys have found the Endangered Species Act is popular with the public, including Republicans. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of protected species from extinction since it was created, not just from bullets but also from bulldozers. This regulatory rollback seeks to undermine the laws greatest strength: protecting the habitats species need to survive. Congress knew the importance of habitat when it passed the law, and it wrote a definition of take that allows the agencies to protect it. Mariah Meek is an associate professor of integrative biology at Michigan State University. Karrigan Börk is a professor of law at the University of California, Davis. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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