Alliance Alert: The Alliance for Rights and Recovery is encouraged to see that New York City has achieved a 28% decline in overdose deaths—the first major decrease since the pandemic began. This progress represents a hard-fought milestone for the field and a sign that investments in harm reduction, treatment access, and community outreach are saving lives.
We are especially heartened to see that overdose deaths among Black and Latino New Yorkers have finally begun to decline, after years of disproportionate harm in communities of color. These reductions show the impact of focused, community-based strategies but also underscore the ongoing need to address the deep inequities that continue to drive higher overdose rates in these communities.
However, as the federal government shifts its funding priorities and walks away from critical harm reduction and community-based initiatives, it is more important than ever for New York City and State to use their resources wisely. This includes strategically deploying opioid settlement funds, expanding harm reduction programs, supporting peer-led initiatives, and investing in long-term recovery supports to ensure that progress continues—and that no one is left behind due to changing federal policies.
The Alliance remains committed to working alongside our partners to sustain this momentum and to ensure that every New Yorker, regardless of race or zip code, has access to the voluntary, person-centered services needed to enter and maintain recovery.
City Overdoses Drop 28% in The First Major Decline Since The Pandemic
By Amanda D’Ambrosio | Crain’s Health Pulse | October 28, 2025
Overdose deaths in the city declined by 28% last year, city health officials said Tuesday, indicating that New York is finally turning a corner after a years-long overdose crisis.
There were 2,192 overdose deaths last year – 864 fewer than in 2023, data released by the city Health Department shows. The decline marks the first time that overdose deaths fell significantly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, following a nationwide trend.
Rising overdose deaths have ravaged the city for the past five years, reaching a record-breaking 3,070 deaths in 2022. The addiction emergency has coincided with dual crises of severe mental illness and homelessness, challenging public health officials to reach individuals who have historically been hard to treat. Mayor Eric Adams has pledged to reduce overdoses as part of his signature campaign to increase New Yorkers’ life expectancy, but ongoing fallout from the pandemic and a rapidly evolving drug supply has made the crisis difficult to address.
The city has invested millions in public health programs to address the overdose crisis, largely stemming from its existing pool of opioid settlement funds totaling $190 million. Those dollars have funded emergency room addiction support, street outreach vans run by the public hospital system and the widespread distribution of the overdose-reversing medication Narcan. The combination of these programs has contributed to the decline, including the two existing overdose prevention centers in Manhattan, said Ann-Marie Foster, president and CEO of Phoenix House, a Long Island City nonprofit that provides residential and outpatient treatment for substance-use disorder. But more resources are needed to build up treatment capacity, especially amid uncertain federal funding, she added.
Last year’s decline is the first significant drop since the pandemic began and offers the most promising sign yet that city efforts to distribute overdose-reversing medications and expand mobile outreach are making a difference in one of its deadliest public health crises.
“This is a real number,” Foster said. “It’s a real hard-fought milestone for the field.”
Despite the decline, deaths are still significantly higher than they were in 2019 and disproportionately affect Black and Latino New Yorkers. Overdoses among Black and Latino New Yorkers fell for the first time since 2018, but individuals within both populations still die more often than any other racial group and at twice the rate of white people, data shows.
“The Bronx is still ground zero for overdose deaths,” Foster said, noting that residents of the borough die from overdoses at twice the rate of Manhattan residents. “We still have work to do, and we can’t let up.”
City officials have recognized that ongoing disparities and continued deaths mean that they must continue to make progress on overdoses.
“While we are finally seeing the needle move on fatal overdoses across the city, too many New Yorkers still continue to die from preventable deaths,” Dr. Michelle Morse, acting city health commissioner, said in a statement. She added that city leaders must be “steadfast in our support of programs that save lives” while continuing to address historic disinvestment and other forms of structural racism.