Win for Memphis activists who say ‘Colossus’ facilities add extra pollution to already overburdened communities

Researchers cannot yet say with confidence why deaths have gone down. Experts have offered multiple possible explanations: increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, expanded addiction treatment, shifts in how people use drugs, and the growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money.

Some also point to research that suggests the number of people likely to overdose has been shrinking, as fewer teens take up drugs and many illicit drug users have died.

Two other theories recently joined the list.

In a paper published last week in the journal Science, University of Maryland researchers point to the drug supply. They say regulatory changes in China a few years ago appear to have diminished the availability of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.

Their argument is based partly on information from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which last year reported that the purity — and dangerous potency — of fentanyl rose early in the COVID-19 pandemic but fell after 2022. It suggests it became harder to make fentanyl and its potency was diluted.

The effects of climate change and global warming are already evident and shaking up our risk landscape: warmer average temperatures, rising sea levels, melting ice caps, longer and more frequent heatwaves, erratic rainfall patterns and more weather extremes.

A most urgent question we need to ask is not only how to tackle climate change, but also how we can best adapt to a changing climate and avert the most damaging consequences – in short, how to mitigate climate risk.

“It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building,” he said, referring to a proposed missile defence system.

Greenland and Denmark have repeatedly pointed out that a 1951 bilateral agreement already allowed the US to vastly expand its military presence on the island.

Only 4%, including just one in 10 Republicans and almost no Democrats, said military force would be a “good idea”.

The Biden administration was disrupting fentanyl traffickers — arresting and prosecuting key drug cartel leaders. Federal officials were also expanding public health and medical insurance programs, funneling more dollars to harm-reduction efforts and making it easier for people to access medications like naloxone and buprenorphine that help prevent overdoses.

An estimated 109,783 additional people would have died from opioid overdose if the population exposed to opioid overdose risk had remained constant rather than declining; an estimated 260,024 fewer people would have died from overdose if probability of fentanyl involvement in opioid overdose deaths had remained constant rather than increasing. Fentanyl's representation in the U.S. drug supply appears to be a key driver of overdose trends. A declining population exposed to overdose risk over the last decade may be related to prior deaths and to evidence-based efforts to prevent substance use and opioid use disorder.

In October 2023, the Sinaloa Cartel looked to publicly signal that it was moving away from fentanyl trafficking amid an intensifying crackdown on its operations by U.S. and Mexican authorities. As one of two major suppliers, this would be a significant shift, but it remains unclear how genuine this announcement was. In October 2025, the Treasury Department sanctioned a slew of companies and their affiliates for allegedly supplying fentanyl precursors to a faction of Sinaloa.

MANN: Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. When I first started reporting on fentanyl, A, most experts said stopping this drug or even slow [inaudible] significantly would be nearly impossible. That's because fentanyl is just easy to make from industrial chemicals. So drug policy experts I've been speaking to think Biden expanded health care and drug addiction treatment programs in ways that saved lives. And this new paper suggests Biden's team also convinced China to help curb the sale of so-called precursor chemicals that are needed to make fentanyl in ways that really hit the drug gangs hard. Again, here's Keith Humphreys.

“when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”

The most significant increase in these losses in relation to GNI was also visible in the US, where losses measured in terms of GNI rose steeply from decade to decade up to the last five years – by which time they were roughly five times the level between 1980 and 1989. There was a similarly sharp increase in Germany, due in no small part to the losses caused by the Ahr Valley floods in 2021.