The increase was especially high for Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native people
, which is less bulky. The pandemic also worsened people’s mental health and isolated them, which may have pushed people who use drugs to take them alone—which experts warn makes it harder for people to receive help from others, in the form of the overdose reversal drug naloxone or by calling an ambulance.
Even though research continues to find that people of color are most at risk for overdose deaths, white Americans are still the face of the drug overdose crisis in both media coverage and the medical community, says Dr. Ayana Jordan, a professor of psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine who researches treatment for substance-use disorders among marginalized communities .
“Ten years ago, you could not turn on the TV and not hear about the opioid crisis, and how it was affecting white people, especially in middle America. You could not escape it,” says Jordan. “With that same intensity, we need to say that drug overdoses are being fueled in Black and Indigenous communities at rates we’ve never seen before.”
That lack of attention can have public-health ramifications. Since neither Black people nor stimulant users have traditionally been the face of the overdose crisis, many people of color don’t know that they should be taking extra precautions, such as testing their drugs with fentanyl test strips. Black people also aren’t screened for opioid-use disorder often enough, she says. “A lot of people don’t even realize that fentanyl is indeed an opioid,” says Jordan.
There’s also an urgent need to develop medication-assisted treatment for addiction to stimulants like cocaine, Jordan says. Building awareness among scientists, clinicians, and the general public that Black and Indigenous people are so vulnerable to overdoses is necessary, she says, in order to save their lives.
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