Governor Proclaims Overdose Awareness Day 2024

OVERDOSE AWARENESS DAY

2024

BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS, from 2000 to 2022, 37,000 North Carolinians were among the more than one million Americans who died from drug overdose; according to updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, the combined medical, social, and personal cost of drug overdose deaths in North Carolina alone totaled over $49 billion in 2022; and

WHEREAS, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this crisis, with overdose deaths increasing 85 percent since 2019 and 4,339 North Carolinians losing their lives to overdose in 2022, the highest recorded number in a single year; and

WHEREAS, the rates of overdose are increasing fastest among Hispanic and Black/African American North Carolinians, with a 188 percent and 171 percent increase in their overdose death rates from 2019 to 2022, respectively, while American Indian/Indigenous communities have the highest overdose rate at 109.7 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2022; and

WHEREAS, since 2020, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has distributed over 800,000 doses of naloxone, the life-saving overdose reversal medication; and

WHEREAS, more than 34,000 individuals received treatment for opioid use disorder from one of the 85 opioid treatment programs in North Carolina; learn more about treatment programs, syringe services programs, and other evidence-based strategies to prevent overdose deaths in North Carolina at www.morepowerfulnc.org; and

WHEREAS, the historic opioid settlement provides a critical opportunity for communities across North Carolina to invest in evidence-based overdose prevention strategies to curb this heartbreaking trend; and

WHEREAS, Overdose Awareness Day is a day to remember those in our great state and across the country whose lives have been lost to overdose, to honor family and community grief, to acknowledge and address stigma related to substance use and substance use disorders across the continuum, and to renew our commitment to ending the overdose crisis;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, ROY COOPER, Governor of the State of North Carolina, do hereby proclaim August 31, 2024, as “OVERDOSE AWARENESS DAY” in North Carolina, and commend its observance to all citizens.

________________________________________

Roy Cooper

Governor

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the Great Seal of the State of North Carolina at the Capitol in Raleigh this fifteenth day of August in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-four and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-ninth.