Colorado will use $3 million in opioid settlement funds to provide naloxone to local organizations, aiming to curb overdose deaths, in a move follows a 15.6% statewide decrease in drug fatalities in 2024
Vehicle Support Technician Paul Grimes shows a Narcan kit, a brand of the livesaving opioid overdose medication naloxone, while stocking ambulances at Denver Health in Denver on July 11, 2024.
Hyoung Chang/TNS
By Nick Coltrain
The Denver Post
DENVER — Colorado will use $3 million from the state’s opioid settlement fund to provide the overdose-reversal drug
naloxone
to local organizations, Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Tuesday.
The new grant comes as Colorado saw more than 300 fewer people die from drug overdoses in 2024, marking a 15.6% drop from 2023’s total, according to preliminary data released by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
earlier this month. The CDC projected that 1,701 people died from drug overdoses in the state in 2024.
The state saw an even steeper decrease in deaths — 31% — among those that involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to Weiser’s office. Officials credited the availability of naloxone, which has the brand name Narcan, for helping to blunt the health crisis.
Used appropriately, it can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
“Every life lost to an opioid overdose is one too many,” Weiser said in a news release. “This funding puts a proven tool in the hands of the people who need it most. We are using every resource available to protect communities, prevent overdoses, and support recovery.”
Denver also saw
a marked decrease
in the number of people who died from a drug overdose in 2024 compared to 2023. The city reported that 483 people died from an overdose last year, compared to 598 in 2023. That decrease followed a 32% surge in drug overdose deaths in Denver in 2023,
as the overdose crisis peaked
.
In both years, more than half the deaths involved fentanyl, methamphetamine, or a combination of the two.
However, recent numbers don’t portray a continued decline. In the first four months of 2025, Denver saw a year-over-year increase in the number of people who died from a drug overdose compared to 2024. City officials reported that 201 people died from a drug overdose from Jan. 1 to April 28, compared to 168 in the same period in 2024.
The
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
will administer the new naloxone grant. The money comes from more than $132 million it has received through nationwide settlements with drug manufacturers and distributors, according to Weiser’s office.
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