Nabarun Dasgupta is on a mission to change the way the United States prevents overdoses: shots

When 2024’s provisional overdose data were published earlier this year, showing a 27% drop in deaths compared to the rates of 2023, Nabarun Dasgupta felt immense relief.

“I felt like I was being able to expire for the first time in 20 years,” said Dasguta, an epidemiologist from the University of North Carolina who studies street drugs. “When we checked [the data] and felt like that [decline] It was real, I think I slept better that night than I had done it in a time, very long. “”

Experts claim that several factors have probably contributed to the sharp drop in deaths of drugs between 2024 and 2023, including less deadly food, easier access to the treatment of drug addiction and increased naloxone distribution (also known as Narcan).

The analysis of Dasgupta, published in March, noted that deaths linked to fentanyl and other street drugs have plunged into many states at levels not seen since 2020.

Work is personal for Dasgupta, he told the organization of news of health policy Compromise. He began to analyze data on death by overdose two decades ago when a close friend died of an overdose of heroin. As a Nerd of self-written numbers, Dasgutta hoped to dig into the data would help him to face.

“”[He] was the first that really connected me with the human side of drug problems in the United States, “said Dasgupta about his friend and former colleague, Tony Givens, who died in 2004.” It was simply difficult to feel it disappear in my life. “”

A chemist in the Dasgupta laboratory is preparing street medication samples for the analysis of chemical composition.

Pearson Ripley / UNC

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Pearson Ripley / UNC

What started as an act of self-suffering for Dasgupta quickly became a vocation. He is now one of the country’s main experts on street drug epidemiology, and the analysis of his laboratory on overdose trends and constantly evolving drugs is closely followed by decision -makers and journalists.

But Dasgupta said Compromise Its most important audience – and inspiration – are people who have died or could die of an overdose.

“Our main mission is to recover information from people who consume drugs,” said Dasgupta. “Their life is at stake.”

Below you will find the protruding facts of the DASGUPTA conversation with Compromisewhich was slightly published for length and clarity.

Who was Tony Givens? Why was it important to you?

We met in 2002 in Yale, where I was a student, and he was one of the awareness workers. He had a lot of street experience and I was supposed to learn to do scientific research in the field with respect for the community.

Tony was just a huge spirit … super compassionate. I remember the first weekend that we were doing work on the ground. We were in Maine and I was a student – very hard for money. He came with me to TJ Maxx, and it turned out that I did not have enough money to buy underwear, like the first day of work. And Tony released like a $ 50 ticket and I said to myself: “I got you, guy, I got you.” So it’s the kind of guy he was.

There are people in your life that are more than mentors. They serve the role of a moral compass, and Tony was the first that really connected me with the human side of drug problems in the United States.

Can you tell us what happened to Tony?

When I met him, he hadn’t had a drug problem for decades. But he went through emotional troubles with a girlfriend and with a close friend. Things got along for him, and he decided to end his life. So it was an overdose, but it was an intentional overdose. It was simply very difficult to feel it disappear in my life.

When you went to the figures to try to put Tony’s death in context, what happened? And how did it take you on this path on which you are still today?

I thought it was going to be an easy question: how many deaths by overdose is there in the United States? And at that time – it’s about 2005 – CDC did not come out these figures. So what I was directed by CDC, it is these national files that have a line for each person who died in the United States – of all causes. And our goal would be to withdraw which from them were overdoses.

In order to download the data, you must have authorizations and software and write code. I understood it, working by myself at night outside my day work. And when I finally felt confident on this subject, I looked up and I realized, I guess I have all this code and access to the data, and I can ask all kinds of data questions. This is how Tony’s death pushed me to try to understand these figures and tell a better story with them.

Part of your work is Testing the medication – Understand the safety of what is bought and sold in the street. Can you explain how your test program works?

We get drug samples directly from people who consume drugs, as well as programs that provide front -line public health services to keep people alive. Once the samples have arrived on the campus, we analyze them and determine exactly what there is – each substance. We put the results on the website so that people who consume drugs can first obtain the results.

We can identify whether things have been added that are dangerous beyond, for example, fentanyl or methamphetamine. We have identified more than 400 unique substances in the supply of drugs, which gives you an idea of the unfables and the unpredictable that the supply of drugs is at this moment.

If you could get data you want on the behavior of people who consume drugs, what would you like to help reduce the estimate 80,000 death by overdose What did we see last year?

I would like to know why people always use fentanyl and street opioids. We hear in our field studies – these are like sociological and qualitative assessments – that people no longer use to become high; They use to avoid withdrawal. I think by asking: “Why would you continue to use, despite what you know about fentanyl and what you saw your friends?” Would unlock an understanding of the obstacles that people face to make real changes in their lives.

What you say, I think is that there is an opportunity for political decision -makers to access this knowledge in the street and to use it to better inform their development of policies?

Yes, theoretically there is this opportunity. But our main mission is to recover information from people who consume drugs. Their lives are at stake. As scientists and decision -makers, we are not affected in the same way. So we try first to bring information back to the community, let it do with information what they need to do to protect themselves. And then we can find models that can shed light on politics and science. But it is really a secondary objective.

What about someone who says that the best way to help people on the street is to create better policy? Is one by one with people not effective when the problem is still so huge?

Over the past 50 years, American American policy has not done a particularly good job. Overdoses have reached historically high levels. So when we throw our hands and say: “It’s too much a problem to personalize and solve:” I think we are doing a bad service. It is perhaps time to move away from a national drug policy and to have a localized, regional or even city drug policy which corresponds to what is happening in the supply of medication.

You have almost a free market approach in your point of view: consumers must know what is in the offer at the individual level, and we must trust that consumers will, most often, make intelligent and rational choices.

Absolutely. Medicines are a free market. They are very slightly regulated, and there is a lot of unexploited potential by looking at people who consume drugs as consumers – to allow them to make changes to the local level, in a way that the efforts from top to bottom of the law application cannot reach and have not in the 20, 30, 40, 50 years of drug policy in the United States. The drug offer has become more intense, more dangerous. We have to do something that will break this cycle.

When I told you in the past, you are optimistic, often sunny. At the same time, I am quite convinced that work has made a real consequence about you. How do you describe this toll?

The good days, I try to exploit it as the reason why I have to continue. And other days, I’m just going to disappear in paperwork and spending reports, so as not to have to get involved directly with death. My mobile phone contains millions of death records, and it is like a weight in my transported pocket, just feeling this level of loss.

People will send us drug samples and they are in these white cardboard boxes. And often in addition, we will see handwritten notes and small drawn figures. The people who say: “thank you” or “your service helped someone save their lives”. Having these types of notes every week really makes a difference. Just the personal feeling of “OK is not just data collection. It actually does something in service.”

In a sentence, what would Tony say about the work you have done?

“You did well, but you have a lot to learn.” It would be delivered with a laugh and a tape in the back and a hug, and probably a few tears in your eyes to be proud of me.

I know that there are many more people who will die, but maybe I think maybe, for the first time in two decades, I have the impression, ok, we are heading in the right direction.

Dan Gorenstein is editor -in -chief and Ryan Levi is a journalist for CompromiseA non -profit press organization that reports the most difficult choices of health care. You can register for compromises’ Weekly newsletter To get the latest stories in your reception box every Thursday morning.