The Brief

Drug overdose deaths throughout Los Angeles County declined 22% last year compared to the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday by the Department of Public Health.

It’s the most significant drop in county history, led by an unprecedented decrease in fentanyl-related deaths.

The number of accidental overdose deaths or poisonings involving fentanyl decreased by 37% in 2024, the first reduction since county officials began routinely testing for the drug, according to the report. Methamphetamine-related overdose deaths decreased by 20% last year, compared to 2023.

Fentanyl overdose deaths had previously surged from 109 deaths in 2016 to more than 2,000 in 2023, a crisis-inducing increase of 1,700%.

That crisis has disproportionately hit L.A. County’s more than 75,000 unhoused residents for whom overdose remains the leading cause of death. Fentanyl overdoses claimed the lives of more than 1,500 unhoused Angelenos at their peak in 2022, according to county Public Health data.

Officials say the sharp decrease in 2024 shows that recent county investments in overdose response, harm reduction methods and treatment are saving lives.

“This progress reflects the dedication of countless staff and community partners who work every day to connect people with life-saving resources and care,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement. “While we are encouraged by this trend, we know the work is far from over.”

The findings in the local report mirror a decline of more than 25% in drug overdose deaths nationally in 2024, according to provisional data from the CDC.

The CDC said there were multiple factors behind that drop, including widespread distribution of naloxone — a medication that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose — along with increased access to treatment for substance use disorder and shifts in the illegal drug supply.

The L.A. County analysis is based on data from the Medical Examiner and is part of a yearly data report by the health department’s Substance Abuse Prevention & Control division.

By the numbers

Both the number and rate of drug overdose deaths had increased steadily beginning in 2015 and reaching a peak of 3,220 deaths in 2022. That was a rate of nearly 33 deaths per 100,000 population.

In 2023, overall drug overdose deaths declined by nearly 3%, the first reduction in a decade. But 2024’s decline was much bigger at 22%.

Drug-related overdose and poisoning deaths dropped from 3,137 deaths in 2023 to 2,438 deaths in 2024, the lowest number recorded since 2019. Last year’s rate was nearly 25 per 100,000.

Fentanyl crisis slows down

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin. While effective for treating pain when taken as prescribed, the known or unknown use of illicitly manufactured versions of the drug can lead to addiction or overdose, health officials say.

Fentanyl has been a major driver of accidental overdose deaths in L.A. County in recent years, unseating methamphetamine in 2022 as the most common drug listed as a cause of death in county records.

Last year, fentanyl was involved in 52% of all accidental overdose deaths in the County, down from 64% in 2023.

Despite the sharp decline in fentanyl overdose deaths, there were still 1,263 in L.A. County last year, representing a significant public health threat. According to health officials, many of those deaths resulted from unintentional poisonings in which people consumed pills or drugs in other forms without knowing they contained fentanyl.

Health officials say overdose and poisoning deaths cut across socioeconomic lines, but the risks were greater in poorer parts of L.A. County last year. The rate of overdose deaths from fentanyl was four times higher in neighborhoods where more than 30% of families live below the federal poverty line compared to more affluent areas with less than 10% of families living below the poverty line, according to the county report.

The new data also show fentanyl overdose death rates disproportionately affected Black Angelenos in 2024. Black residents make up about 8% of the county’s population, but accounted for 19% of fentanyl deaths last year.

Meanwhile, men in L.A. County die from fentanyl overdoses at much higher rates than women, according to the report. For every woman who dies from a fentanyl overdose, about four men die from the same cause.

Adults between ages 26 and 39 years had the highest rate of fentanyl overdose death.

The report found fentanyl overdose deaths decreased across each of the five L.A. County supervisorial districts last year.

What’s working?

County health officials said the report shows that local investments in prevention, treatment and harm reduction are saving lives.

Harm reduction is a public health approach that aims to reduce the negative consequences that accompany drug use, recognizing that some people are unwilling or unable to stop using substances.

In L.A. County, harm reduction providers distribute naloxone, drug-checking strips, clean syringes and more for free to people who use drugs, including unhoused Angelenos struggling with addiction. Those providers also connect participants with other supportive services.

Last year, the county increased investments in substance-use prevention by 260%, drug treatment by 275% and harm reduction services by 500%, according to the Public Health Department.

L.A. County has dramatically expanded its distribution of naloxone in recent years, making it more available in libraries, jails and other spaces. In 2020, county service providers handed out 48,000 doses of naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan. Last year, they distributed nearly 480,000 doses, according to an earlier county report.

The county launched an education campaign encouraging county employees and residents to carry naloxone.

Since 2019, the county’s health departments have collaborated to prevent at least 35,000 drug overdoses, according to their estimates. In addition to a million naloxone doses, those systems have delivered 3 million sterile syringes and 100,000 fentanyl test strips.

The county does street outreach and has opened a dozen new health hubs in high-need areas, including a new Skid Row Care Campus opened last month in the Skid Row-area of downtown L.A. The campus will include a dedicated harm reduction health hub focused on drug users, as well as a health center and 250 interim housing beds.

In the new report, county officials suggest more harm reduction measures are needed in order to save more lives, including “safer consumption sites” — designated spaces where people can use drugs under the supervision of trained personnel.

Los Angeles County does not fund or operate any safe consumption sites, according to officials. The approach is controversial. In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have allowed L.A. and other cities to run supervised drug injection sites.

Last month, L.A. County health departments launched a new website, ByLAforLA.org, highlighting their collective approach to the overdose crisis.

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024