September is National Recovery Month, honoring those who have recovered from substance use disorder, while also remembering those who lost their battles with drug and alcohol addiction.
It comes on the heels of last month's National Overdose Awareness Day, while also being the traditional time for the Narcan at Night event, organized by national nonprofit Mobilize Recovery. On September 16, over 700 volunteers distributed 15,000 doses of the opioid overdose medication, Naloxone.
This all comes at a significant time for Southern Nevada, which is finally seeing a drop in its overdose rates.
According to the Clark County Coroner, drug-related deaths dropped by over 11% in 2025, compared to 2024, and numbers compiled by the Health District earlier this year show the age-adjusted overdose rate fell by nearly a quarter from 2024 to 2025.
At the same time, Health District data shows the nonfatal overdose rate increased by nearly 7% — likely thanks to the bevy of harm reduction measures local agencies have enacted, like upping Naloxone and test-strip dissemination to check for deadly adulterants, increasing education, and targeting outreach to specific zip codes around Las Vegas.
Jessica Johnson, a health education supervisor with the Southern Nevada Health District, said Nevada is finally catching up to the declining overdose trends present in the rest of the nation. That lag could be due to how the U.S. drug flow works.
"Some of the adulterants like fentanyl, xylazine, metatomidine, we have seen begin on the east coast and sort of make their way west," she told KNPR's State of Nevada. That migration takes time, both to saturate the local drug supply, and also peter itself out.
But timing isn't the only reason local overdose fatalities are falling. Johnson notes that the County's 2025 "naloxone saturation" threshold being met — wherein enough of the opioid overdose reversal drug circulates in the community to cover at least 80% of witnessed overdoses — has had a big impact. But it, too, took time to scale up.
"Getting there was a result of numerous factors," she said. "[Including] the Health District and our state partners really identifying the procurement of dollars, took some time. We had some opportunity internally to add additional staff to help ensure that we could get the the medication out the door; train agencies to distribute the naloxone and get the medication out the door. We also had the opportunity to work with places that wanted to make the naloxone publicly available, so not just available for their staff internally for emergency response or clients that they serve, but really be part of a hub of public access for naloxone." That includes places like Las Vegas-Clark County Library locations, which now stock free naloxone.
The next potential steps, said Johnson, could be attempting to get more naloxone into hospital emergency rooms for distribution to community members, or putting the overdose medication where travelers might need it most.
"[That] opportunity that was highlighted by a recent CDC morbidity mortality weekly report (MMWR), [which] found that there is a gap in terms of access to naloxone at places like hotels and motels, so one opportunity might be expanding access to staff or hotel guests as an additional touchpoint for individuals."
If you or a loved one is struggling with substance use, you can call the Crisis Support Services of Nevada’s 24/7 hotline at 1-800-450-9530. Or text "IMREADY" to 839863 to talk to a local substance abuse counselor.
Guest: Jessica Johnson, health education supervisor, Southern Nevada Health District
