Drug overdose deaths in Orange County have declined more than 50 percent since 2021, according to newly released data from the medical examiner’s office. While 251 people died of fatal drug overdose in Orange County in 2025, that’s down 52 percent since 2021, when the county saw 528 deaths, most involving fentanyl.
“Every life lost to overdose is one too many,” Dr. Thomas Hall, a substance use disorder treatment provider, acknowledged in a statement. Still, he said, the county plans to continue to build on their existing prevention work, expand clinical services, and “work closely with our law enforcement partners to ensure residents have the support they need to recover and thrive.”
Hall, a treatment provider of more than 20 years, serves as director of the county’s drug-free coalition, and has helped shape the county’s overdose prevention strategy. He and director of Orange County Health Services Dr. Raul Pino are nonetheless heartened to see the decline in deaths and hope to see the momentum continue.
“These numbers represent lives saved, and families spared tragic loss,” said Dr. Pino. “Orange County has invested heavily in prevention, treatment and recovery through partnerships built via the Orange County Drug-Free Coalition, and the community-wide approach is working.”
The decline in overdose deaths here in Orange County falls in line with a trend seen across the state of Florida and most states in the U.S. This follows a significant spike in deaths during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, attributed in part to isolation, stress, and disrupted access to social support and addiction treatment resources.
Roughly 1110,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdose in 2023, while provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts the total count for 2025 to be just under 72,000 deaths — a more than 30 percent decrease.
Most overdose deaths in recent years, including in Orange County, have involved the powerful opioid fentanyl or one of its analogues. While legally prescribed in some forms as a painkiller, fentanyl is also manufactured illicitly, and can be lethal if taken in even small amounts by someone without a tolerance for opioid drugs.
Although opioids such as morphine, heroin and oxycodone (OxyContin) can be highly addictive, not all opioid-related deaths occur among those with addiction.
According to Dr. Hall, who coordinates with local law enforcement agencies on drug seizures, fentanyl has continued to show up in illicit drugs marketed as cocaine, meth and counterfeit versions of pills. Taking a drug that’s laced with fentanyl — a powerful central nervous system depressant — can be extremely dangerous and life-threatening for people who aren’t aware that their drugs contain it. Fentanyl is about 100 times more potent than morphine and about 50 times more potent than heroin.
“There are pills that are stamped out as Xanax or some other drug, an ADHD drug, that includes fentanyl or a fentanyl analogue,” Hall toldOrlando Weekly.
Still, he noted that, according to his law enforcement partners, seizures of fentanyl in Orange County appear to be down. Nationally, experts have pointed to a dwindling supply of fentanyl over the last couple of years as a contributor to the reduction in fentanyl-related deaths, plus a decline in the drug’s purity.
Fentanyl was involved in roughly 70 percent of all U.S. overdose deaths in 2023, either ingested alone or in combination with other drugs. According to the new data from Orange County, fentanyl-related deaths have decreased 72 percent in recent years, from 421 deaths in 2021 to 121 deaths in 2025.
Fentanyl-related deaths in Orange County have dropped 72 percent since 2021
“I think the availability of naloxone is a big piece of those drops,” Hall told the Weekly. Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, is a life-saving medication that can reverse an opioid overdose by blocking opioid receptors in the brain, if it’s administered quickly enough and in a strong enough dosage, depending on the level or kind of opioids a person has in their system. In some cases, with fentanyl and its synthetic analogues, more than one dose may be needed.
Narcan can either be sprayed up the nose or injected. It’s free from various locations throughout Florida, thanks to the state’s I Save FL program. It can also be purchased at some retail locations such as Publix.
The county government has worked with local nonprofits to increase access to naloxone throughout Orange County, including through pop-up distribution events in downtown Orlando and at popular events such as the Electric Daisy Carnival, where “party drug” use is commonly expected (if officially not allowed).
Orange County has also increased efforts to distribute fentanyl test strips, which are a simple tool that can test drugs to see if they contain fentanyl.
Fentanyl test strips were, until recently, technically illegal to possess, sell or distribute in Florida due to antiquated language in Florida’s state statutes. In 2024, however, Florida lawmakers passed a law to decriminalize fentanyl test strips, allowing the county to invest in them and distribute them legally to high-risk populations.
That includes people with addiction in jail and those recently released from jail, who have a much higher risk of overdose and death due to their reduced drug tolerance. Dr. Hall and his team have launched targeted strategies through their new Better Access to Treatment program, which aims to help those leaving jail access treatment and other basic resources, including housing and other supportive services.
“They don’t have a whole lot of self-confidence, and so it’s really easy for them to fall back into a drug use cycle. They may be without housing, and that’s where the hospital social workers can be very helpful,” Hall said.
The county’s program coordinates with Orlando Health and Advent Health, where a team dedicated to care coordination for people with opioid addiction can identify people who are repeatedly coming into the ER for drug-related issues and help connect them with treatment.
The gold standard for opioid addiction in particular is medication-assisted treatment, a form of treatment combining medication and counseling that can cut the risk for overdose in half. Orange County became the first county in Florida in 2022 to begin offering this life-saving treatment for opioid addiction in its jail system.
Through funding the county has received through national legal settlements with opioid manufacturers, Hall’s team is able to help fund free treatment for people with opioid addiction and offer other types of social support, including housing support, for a limited time. “We’re able to provide them 60 to 90 days of social support to get them back in a place where they can better take care of themselves,” he said.
Helping to locate transitional housing, providing medication for opioid use disorder, and wraparound social services — these are the things that deter overdose deaths, Hall argued.
“I think probably something that’s underrated is the whole idea that you’ve got somebody who sees you as a person of value,” he added. “It’s very, very difficult for those persons who are coming out of drug dependence to believe in themselves, and so it’s really helpful to have somebody who can stand in that gap for a short time, while they reestablish some sense of identity that isn’t based on disease and disorder.”
You can find more information about recovery and medication-assisted treatment resources in Orange County by visiting Orange County Responds.
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
