White House drug policy chief calls for ‘continuous commitment’ to overdose epidemic

The White House’s top drug policy official is urging the next presidential administration to continue the progress President Biden has made in reducing the country’s overdose deaths.  

As part of Overdose Awareness Week, White House officials met with families who have lost loved ones to addiction as well as addiction recovery advocates.

In a recent meeting, Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, touted steps the Biden administration has taken to address the nation’s overdose epidemic including increasing access to the opioid reversal drug naloxone and rolling out drug-detection technology at U.S. borders.  

“The progress that has been made requires continuous commitment, a commitment of will, a commitment of resources and a commitment to following evidence-based practices in to continue to make this progress,” Gupta told The Hill. 

“We have no time to waste,” Gupta added. “Anything different will not be able to prevent more deaths from happening.”  

Overdose deaths in the United States have been generally increasing since the early 2000s with some dips in the mid-2010s.   

Deaths spiked, though, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that overdoses claimed the lives of almost 200,000 people in 2020 and 2021 alone with synthetic opioids like fentanyl causing most of those deaths.  

In 2023, the number of overdose deaths decreased for the first time in five years, according to provisional data from the CDC. And that trend has continued into 2024.  

An interactive map of CDC provisional data released earlier this month shows a 7.5 percent drop in overall overdose deaths between March 2023 and March 2024. 

“That is equal to one life saved every hour … and that didn’t happen in a vacuum,” Gupta told The Hill.  

Percentage changes in overdose deaths vary by region with many states including Missouri, Indiana and Virginia reporting decreases in overdose deaths in the upper teens. Nebraska reported the largest 12-month decrease in overdose deaths at more than 30 percent, according to the map.