NEW DATA: Florida's Drug Overdose Deaths Among the Highest in U.S.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has released new data surrounding the latest provisional drug overdose deaths across the country from February 2023-2024. Boca Recovery Center has two locations in Florida (Boca Raton, Pompano Beach) and four nationwide – has analyzed this data and found some tragic state-by-state trends.

As expected, the three most populated states (California, Texas, and Florida, respectively) suffer from the most overdoses per day. California comes in at #1 with 32.3 deaths per day, Florida with 19.3, and Texas with 15.4. Despite Texas containing approximately eight million more residents, it has four fewer overdose deaths per day.

However, from February 2023 to 2024, California, Florida, and Texas did not crack the top 10 for most fatalities per capita. West Virginia (75.2), Alaska (51.3), Tennessee (50.3), Delaware (47.9), and Louisiana (47.2) round out the top five.

Of California, Texas, and Florida, it is the Sunshine State that maintains the highest death per capita (31.1), with California (30.3) and Texas (18.5) trailing behind.

A multitude of problems causes drug overdoses. Users can get addicted through the purchase of illicit substances or from the opiates prescribed by doctors to ease pain. Deaths from overdose are tragic and not only affect those who use but can ravage the social fabric due to the reverberations of pain inflicted upon the families of overdose victims.

As for prescribed painkillers, that’s an issue that might require more complicated solutions. However, regarding illicit substances such as fentanyl and tranq (xylazine) coming across the border enabled by the cartels south of the Rio Grande, what solutions are legislators suggesting to combat this deadly problem?

In January of 2023, Representatives Michael Waltz (R-FL), a retired U.S. Army Green Beret, and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) endorsed former President Donald Trump’s hawkish plan to combat Mexican drug cartels. Reps. Waltz and Crenshaw introduced legislation that would authorize direct military action against the cartels through the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Their resolution is known as the AUMF to Combat, Attack, Resist, Target, Eliminate, and Limit (CARTEL) Influence Resolution.

In a statement, Waltz championed the effort, expressing that “the situation at our southern border has become untenable for our law enforcement personnel largely due to the activities spurred by the heavily armed and well financed Sinola and Jalisco cartels.”

Stressing the need “to go on offense,” Waltz assured that this is the right way forward because “not only are these paramilitary transnational criminal organizations responsible for killing an unprecedented number of Americans, but are actively undermining our sovereignty by destabilizing our border and waging war against U.S. law enforcement and the Mexican military.”

Rep. Crenshaw echoed in Waltz’s remarks, affirming that “the cartels are at war with us – poisoning almost 80,000 Americans with fentanyl every year, creating a crisis at our border, and turning Mexico into a failed narco-state.”

Because of this, Crenshaw argued that the “legislation will put us on a war footing against the cartels by authorizing the use of military force against them.”

“We cannot continue to allow heavily armed and deadly cartels to [destabilize] Mexico and import people and drugs into the United States,” he said, urging the US to treat “them like ISIS – because that is who they are.”

The bill was introduced in the House in January of 2023 but has stalled since. With President Trump’s endorsement of the plan, should he retain the White House, perhaps it could find new life.