Tennessee has 2nd most fatal drug overdoses in the U.S.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — In a new study by Journo Research, Tennessee has the second most fatal drug overdoses in the United States with 54.3 fatalities per 100,000 people.

While there are many theories why overdoses are at an all-time high in Tennessee. Officials don’t believe it boils down to one specific reason, but a mix of issues that is causing so many fatal drug overdoses.

“It’s like steady, like a steady stream of people for the most part. It can dip during in the holidays because sometimes people don’t want to come into treatment in the holidays but it’s like two years is a pretty consistent problem,” said Director of Operations at Chattanooga Recovery Center, Autumn Cain.

While Autumn says the number of drug users has continued to stay consistent, they have been consistently high. But she believes that these numbers are so consistent because of harm reduction.

“Not surprising… I think that there is a little bit more resistance towards harm reduction here with things like that. Especially people in this demographic will shake their head at it, like clean needle exchanges. Like, “no we don’t do that here,” said Cain.

With close to 4,000 fatal drug overdoses last year, Autumn says that there needs to be more resources such as rehab centers in low populated areas. As a large portion of these fatal overdoses are in rural areas in Tennessee.

“The poverty level is higher you in Tennessee, so anytime you have someone who’s associated with like a socioeconomical culture where they don’t have access to resources so that they can be preventative. You can’t expect them to prevent it,” said Cain.

The process behind drug rehab centers is more than just getting people to stop, and Autumn says the majority of people use drugs because of other challenges going on in their life.

“It’s a lot bigger than someone just stop using drugs. It’s retraining the brain to understand that you’re not supposed to have this much dopamine and getting them through that process is extremely difficult because my brain is still asking me for it,” added Cain.

Autumn believes that Tennessee can lower the fatal drug overdoses by having more people become aware of how severe drugs can affect a person’s life mentally.

“Just having like a real understanding that this isn’t a taboo topic to talk about, that it’s real, this is what it is. Some people have resources that other people don’t, and I wish they won’t have the same, but they don’t,” said Cain.

According to Hamilton County’s first quarter report, there have been 45 drug overdoses already in 2024. Which as high as that sounds, it is actually 22% lower than 2023’s quarter one.