For the first time in five years, drug-related deaths in the U.S. declined in 2023.

It is the sort of headline we’ve all been waiting to see, but it is news that should be taken with a grain of salt. Deaths decreased by just 3%. In 2023, there were 107,543 drug-related deaths, compared to 111,029 the year before. And 2023’s fatalities were still higher than those from 2021. Put simply, we are still very much in the midst of a crisis.

At the same time, though, it is important to recognize that progress is progress. Three percent sounds marginal, but nearly 3,500 fewer drug-related deaths are worth acknowledging.

Unfortunately, Boulder County has seen no such decline. According to the Boulder County Coroner, there were 68 drug-related deaths in 2023, up slightly from 66 the previous year. What did climb noticeably, though, was the number of fentanyl-related deaths, which jumped from 28 in 2022 to 38 in 2023.

And on top of this opioid crisis, we in Colorado have an alcohol crisis, as highlighted in a devastating report from the Denver Post published earlier this year. In 2022, alcohol killed 1,547 people statewide, and between 2018 and 2021, deaths from alcohol increased by more than 60%.

In Boulder County, alcohol was found to have caused 10 deaths and was present in 40 other deaths in 2023. Earlier this year, the Boulder Police Department data highlighted that DUI arrests had spiked recently, with 30 occurring in one month.

(The uptick in DUI arrests, according to Interim Police Chief Stephen Redfearn, is due to an increase in enforcement. But a spike in numbers due to increased enforcement still serves to highlight the unrecognized depth of this issue.)

All of these things point to our dearth of resources for those in need of addiction treatment — and to our society’s troubling relationship with drugs and alcohol.

The first thing we need to do is stop people from dying — especially from opioid overdoses. And we can do that by making sure everyone in our community who might need naloxone has barrier-free access to it, and by engaging the public in an educational campaign to teach people to use naloxone and to raise awareness of the potentially deadly consequences of consuming any drug that hasn’t been legally acquired from a pharmacy.

(Naloxone is often referred to as Narcan, which is a brand-name product.)

Mental Health Partner’s You-CAN program has established kiosks around Boulder and Broomfield counties that provide free Narcan and fentanyl test strips. This is a worthy program that is absolutely worth building upon.

Now, though, we must focus our energies on addiction treatment and providing our community with the support and resources necessary to address the systemic underlying causes of substance use.

“The Coroner, DA’s Office and law enforcement developed a model response protocol for every drug-related death, which is now being used in other parts of the state,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in an email. “However, statewide, we need to do far more to prevent deaths and provide treatment for those struggling with addiction.

“Colorado ranks in the bottom ten nationwide, in the accessibility of substance abuse treatment in the community,” Dougherty continued. “And those gaps result in hundreds and hundreds of criminal cases — and too many deaths — every year. So, we continue to fight for more substance abuse treatment in the community. We have developed successful programs in the Jail and the courthouse, including our Drug Treatment Court and Drug Diversion Program — but people should not have to wait for an arrest to access treatment.”

We couldn’t agree more.

We have argued many times before that our jail is not suited to treat those with mental and behavioral health issues and that we should be getting individuals in crisis help before they wind up in jail. The same is true of those with addiction issues.

That means that as a community we must be willing to invest in more addiction treatment services. Previously, we have advocated for a facility designed specifically to assist those in crisis, such as Larimer County’s sales tax-funded Longview Campus behavioral health center, which provides substance-use treatment, among a variety of other services. With the November election approaching, there is still time for a measure to be put on the ballot to create our own behavioral health center.

For those who see a fundamental difference between illicit drugs and alcohol, it is worth acknowledging that they are different beasts. They are regulated differently. They are acquired differently. They have different effects on people. But the damage they can do to a person — and a community — can be comparable.

This might be an uncomfortable truth to recognize, as alcohol is both normalized and omnipresent in our society. It is a key part of many traditions, a feature at dinner, a way to relax with friends after work. But addiction is addiction. And alcohol’s ubiquity has only served to make it more difficult for some to escape its clutches.

To be clear, we are not arguing for a prohibition on alcohol. Rather, we simply want our community to do the difficult work of acknowledging the catastrophic potential alcohol has for some and to put this knowledge at the forefront of how our community and our society interact with it. We aren’t sure exactly how this will look, but we know we can do better.

Throughout our community, 68 people died from drug-related overdoses last year. Sixty-eight people with friends and families and co-workers and classmates. That devastation splinters and radiates out into our community. We owe it to each and every one of them to do everything we can to save every life and get everyone the help and treatment they need.

When it comes to opioids, let’s all do our part to continue learning about naloxone and ensuring that everyone who might need it, has barrier-free access to it.

And then, let’s get serious about investing in addiction treatment — for drugs and alcohol alike. And let’s start having the difficult conversations about how we confront the ubiquity of these substances in our society.

In the year 2000, fewer than 20,000 people died from any sort of overdose-related death in the U.S. — less than a fifth of the devastation we see today. It is possible to address this crisis, to save lives and to get everyone the help they need, before they wind up in jail — or worse.

Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board