The Brief

People in Los Angeles County now have access to naloxone — the medication that can reduce the effects of an opioid overdose — in more places than ever before, including schools, churches, libraries and jails.

And that may be a key reason why the number of drug overdose deaths in the county plateaued last year, after more than eight years of alarming year-over-year increases, county officials said.

It’s part of the Department of Public Health’s local harm-reduction strategy — an approach that’s gaining traction across the country. It aims to decrease the negative consequences of recreational drug use by reducing stigma and equipping people with life-saving tools and information.

In short, it’s an attempt to meet people where they are.

This week, the county announced a 4% decrease last year in the number of fatalities from drug overdoses or poisoning compared to the previous year. Those numbers were: 3,092 deaths in 2023; down from 3,220 in 2022, according to data from the Medical Examiner’s Office.

The county Department of Public Health called it a “step in the right direction after meteoric rises amid the worst overdose crisis in both local and national history.”

“Harm reduction engages those who are at the highest risk of overdose,” said Dr. Gary Tsai, the department’s director of the Substance Abuse Prevention and Control Division. “We do think that’s one of the areas that most contributed to the plateau.”

He said there has been increased attention on the overdose deaths of young people in recent years, spurring organization leaders that had not been interested in carrying naloxone to change their minds.

More Narcan throughout L.A. County 

Over the past three years, the county increased funding for harm reduction strategies by 500%, the report noted. Tsai said that the county could be seeing the benefits of that now, and admitted it’s an area the department “could have invested more heavily in the past.”

The department partnered with libraries, faith-based groups, schools, universities, housing developments and homeless shelters to provide the naloxone.

The Overdose Education and Naloxone Distribution program has videos available in English and Spanish for training, and offers in-person training for its partners.

The California Department of Health Care Services’ Naloxone Distribution Project has been particularly helpful, Tsai said. Organizations that meet the qualifications can apply to get free naloxone and fentanyl test trips.

Because of the combined efforts of the state, county and local nonprofits, many people are more mindful of the deadly effects of opioids, like fentanyl, as well as how to prevent overdose, Tsai said.

“They know what Narcan even is, which is huge,” he added.

But researchers warn against claiming victory too soon.

Joseph Friedman, a substance-use researcher at UCLA and UC San Diego, said the data might reflect that “people are getting smarter about fentanyl,” but it’s too soon to tell if the decline in deaths will continue.

“Hopefully, we’re really going to plateau for a while and then ideally go downward,” he said.

Fentanyl is still a problem

Data show that fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that's 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, is the most common drug type listed as the cause of death in accidental overdose cases in L.A. County, according to the report. Methamphetamine is also common.

Adults between the ages of 26 and 64 continue to represent the highest overdose and poisoning deaths in the county, but death rates from fentanyl dropped for young adults ages 18 to 25 for the second year in a row, according to the report.

Other key findings for 2023 include:

• The rate of fentanyl-related deaths per 100,000 population increased for Black residents (53.3) to more than twice the rate of fentanyl-related deaths of white Angelenos (25.8).
• For the first time, the number of Latinos residents who died from fentanyl overdose (753) in 2023 was higher than the number of white residents (697) who died as a result of fentanyl.
• The rate of fentanyl deaths per 100,000 in the least affluent areas of L.A. County, was more than triple that of the most affluent areas. (59.6 vs. 16.5).

The county Department of Public Health is increasing efforts to push harm reduction and prevention strategies specifically for Black and Latino residents who have been disproportionately affected by the drug overdose crisis, Tsai said. Efforts include looking for further opportunities to offer naloxone in the settings where they are more likely to have “meaningful connections,” he said, like church or other faith-based institutions, community centers and treatment providers.

Tsai said the department is also trying to target media campaigns in heavily Black and Latino areas of L.A. County, and has expanded its work with social media influencers who can speak directly to these communities.

Fewer deaths last year compared to the year before is encouraging, Tsai said, but there’s still much more to be done. The overall numbers are still far above the numbers in 2019, when fentanyl-related deaths began surging.

“We have a lot more work to do,” Tsaid said.

You can get free naloxone doses at libraries

The L.A. County Library has officially extended its weekly naloxone clinics until the fall. More than 4,500 doses of the opioid overdose treatment have been distributed to over 1,800 people since the first five locations launched last October.

Skye Patrick, director of the L.A. County Library System, said in a statement that extending the clinics demonstrates the library's commitment to tackling the opioid crisis.

“We believe in empowering our communities through access to vital resources,” she said in a statement.

How to spot an overdose

LAist reporter Makenna Sievertson contributed to this article.

Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

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“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

A city of ghost stories 

Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

He says playgoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear,” he said.

As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and a psychic friend says she has a name: Dolores.

“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

“Many people call it the occult. I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there,” Kalbeitzer said.

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

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Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

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In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

“Like it’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’” O’Brien recounted, “And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer. I really wish I could. How wonderful would that be to be able to?’”

The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

“I think that how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences,” he said.

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. 

At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.

The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

The park is expected to remain open during construction.

Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.

“So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said. 

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

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LA Recreation and Parks

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“I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added. 

Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.

Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.

“The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”

The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.

He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park. 

“We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.

Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. 

Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

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