Despite its many wonderful features, Arkansas is not immune to the ongoing substance misuse and addiction issues that plague much of the country. According to the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services, 4,464 Arkansas residents entered treatment for a substance use disorder in 2020 alone.1
From 2017 to 2019, around 175,000 Arkansas residents were affected by substance use disorder, which translates to an annual average prevalence of 7.0% of the state’s population. This figure is quite similar to the national average of 7.4%. 2
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 637 drug overdose fatalities in Arkansas in 2021.3 The following year, there were approximately 4,299 occurrences of Naloxone, an overdose reversal drug, being administered by responding medical personnel.4
In addition, Arkansas’s opioid dispensing rate in 2020 was 82.59 per 100 people, indicating that almost 83 opioid prescriptions were dispensed for every 100 individuals. Despite a reduction in this figure over the last few years, Arkansas still surpasses the Centers for Disease Control’s national average rate of 43.3 per 100 in 2020 by nearly double.5