(Radio Iowa) – Provisional numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control show national drug overdose deaths decreased by 27% last year, but were down only 7% in Iowa.

The assistant director of the University of Iowa Addiction and Recovery Collaborative, Andrea Weber, says fewer opioid related deaths are driving these numbers. She says Iowa still needs to do a better job of getting the opioid-reversal drug naloxone into the community. “We kind of focused on making sure that our first responders had naloxone, which is great, but you know, really identifying that the first person who responds to someone who’s using drugs and experiencing overdose is actually people who are using drugs,” she says.

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Weber says Iowa still has a lot of laws and policies that make it harder for people to get help. “Things like syringe service programming is still illegal in the state of Iowa. Those programs have been shown to reduce overdose death rates,” Weber says.

The provisional data from the CDC showed drug overdoses in Iowa dropped from 447 reported cases in 2023 to 425 in 2024.