In an organization that builds power with low-income people to end HIV/AIDS, mass incarceration, homelessness and the drug war, our member-leaders’ lives illustrate how the overdose crisis is exacerbated not only by lack of housing and health care, but by criminalization.

This past spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released provisional data reporting 108,317 overdose deaths in 2023. It represented a slight decline in annual overdose deaths for the first time since 2018. We want to celebrate decreasing overdose deaths, but there should be nothing to celebrate when hundreds of thousands of people are still dying from preventable causes.

Even when we win long-fought policy demands, Black and Brown communities are routinely left behind in implementation.

The number of loved ones we’ve lost to preventable overdose within the VOCAL family underscores this unconscionable reality. It is why we organized International Overdose Awareness Day actions outside of Governor Hochul’s office in New York City and Governor Abbott’s mansion in Austin, and at Injustice Square in Louisville. Politicians must immediately act on the solutions we know will work, not increase criminalization or policing.

Across VOCAL’s issue-based campaigns, our members are on the frontlines organizing for policies of justice and equity, and politics of love and compassion. But frustratingly, even when we win long-fought policy demands, Black and Brown communities are routinely left behind in implementation.

While overall rates of overdose deaths among white people have stabilized or decreased, Black and Brown people remain in an escalating crisis. Among demographics, Native American people have had the highest overdose death rate since 2018. Black communities have had the second-highest death rates since 2020. And among Latine people, overdose deaths have continued to increase.

Disparities are driven by the deep-rooted impacts of the racist and classist “War on Drugs”—better understood as a war on people.

We see these alarming trends in the states where we are organizing. In Kentucky, the 2023 overdose death rate among Black residents was 51.8 percent higher than among white residents. In New York, while overdose death rates among white people remained largely the same from 2020-2023, rates among Black and Latine people increased by 24 percent and 12 percent, respectively. In Texas, all residents experienced an increase in overdose deaths from 2020- 2023, yet Black and Latine people suffered the biggest increases.

These disparities are not driven by differences in drug use. People of all races and ethnicities use drugs at similar rates. Disparities are instead driven by the deep-rooted impacts of the racist and classist “War on Drugs”—better understood as a war on people. This war prioritizes arrests and criminalization over the stable housing and income, health care, and family and community support that all reduce overdose risks.

Black people are incarcerated at three times their share of the general population, and overdose is the leading cause of death upon release. Black patients continue to have far less access to lifesaving medications, like buprenorphine, than white patients.

In Pennsylvania, Black overdose deaths increased by 50 percent from 2019-2021; Black Pennsylvanians who passed away were half as likely as white people to have received naloxone. Black and Latine New Yorkers, meanwhile, continue to be overrepresented in shelters, and overdose continues to be their leading cause of death. In Boston, people experiencing homelessness are 12 times more likely than the general population to die of an overdose.

Headlines and politicians declare victory and priorities move on—leaving Black and Brown communities with broken promises, the same systemic issues, and the blame for not overcoming these conditions.

Simply put, the communities most criminalized and stigmatized are dying at the highest and fastest-growing rates. This is no cause for celebration. This is not progress.

Time and again, at the earliest signs of progress, headlines and politicians declare victory on a social issue and policy priorities move on—leaving Black and Brown communities with broken promises of relief, the same systemic issues that created the crisis to begin with, and the blame for not overcoming these conditions.

VOCAL-US and all our state chapters approach this work knowing that the issues impacting our communities are driven by institutional oppression, not personal failings.

In 2015, the New York Times gave the overdose crisis a white, sympathetic face. More than 40 years after the United States declared the War on Drugs and began filling prisons with Black and Brown people for drug use, politicians representing outspoken middle-class, suburban white families declared: Punishment is out, compassion is in.

In response, there was an infusion of funding and resources, decarceration, decriminalization and a partial shift from punishing drug use to treating it as a health issue. This was a political strategy to lessen the impacts of the drug war on white communities.

Meanwhile, the drug war and overdose crisis raged on in Black and Brown communities. Just like white families, Black and Brown families have been asking for what will keep us whole and safe—and again and again, the relief comes too little, too late. It’s clear that the gentler drug war wasn’t for our communities.

Our people need OPC, and we will keep organizing until we get them in every state.

In our fight to dismantle the drug war—and the overdose crisis it caused—grassroots organizing is the only path forward. We must continue organizing for policies that are anti-racist and equitable and address our communities’ needs—even when we are told they’re unpopular. Because when the drug war hit white, suburban families, we saw that what is politically popular is a matter of will, not fact.

Building powerful movements is how we win, and we are honored to be part of this week’s national action for OPC. At VOCAL, we often remind each other that people cannot celebrate wins, or whatever their dreams may be, if they are dead. Our people need OPC, and we will keep organizing until we get them in every state.

This International Overdose Awareness Day, let us all commit to holding power accountable—to organizing towards decriminalization, extensive harm reduction infrastructure and divestment from the drug war. Our lives, and the futures of our communities, depend on it. 

Photograph from August 28 protest in New York City by Sarah Duggan/Drug Policy Alliance

This article is part of a short series produced in collaboration with the Drug Policy Alliance to mark Overdose Prevention Center National Solidarity Week. The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, previously received an unrelated restricted grant from DPA. Filter’s Editorial Independence Policy applies.

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