Someone was in the room for a third of these deaths

Hotels and motels are **the second most common location for drug overdose
deaths in the United States**, after houses and apartments. In **2024 alone,
at least 2,327** unintentional or undetermined-intent overdose deaths occurred
in them.

Across 2022–2024, the CDC's State Unintentional Drug Overdose Response
System recorded at least 9,651 such deaths.

The finding that changes what to do about it

**A potential bystander — someone physically nearby with an opportunity to
intervene — was present for 34.7% of these deaths.**

In 63.5% of those, a timely response was delayed or did not occur.

And the most cited reason: **substance use by the bystander accounted for
29.7% of the non-responses or delayed responses.**

So in roughly a third of these deaths, someone was close enough to help. In
most of those cases, help did not arrive in time — and in almost a third of
those, because the person who could have helped was impaired themselves.

That rules out a whole class of intervention. Naloxone in a room is useless if
the only other person present cannot use it; the answer has to reach more than
one person, or reach staff.

Local, not transient

**More than half (56.2%) of these deaths occurred in the same county where the
person lived.**

The mental picture of an overdose in a motel is a traveller passing through.
The data says otherwise: these are mostly residents, in their own county,
which means **local prevention resources already aimed at residents can be
used in these locations**.

Why hotels and motels get missed

Analyses of overdose location help jurisdictions decide where to put limited
prevention resources — naloxone distribution, and local substance use disorder
treatment options. But **analyses of overdose locations do not always
explicitly include hotels and motels**, so a location responsible for the
second-largest share of deaths can be absent from the planning entirely.

The report's recommendation follows: strengthen prevention in these settings
with information about local treatment options, and **opioid overdose
reversal medication distribution and education**.

*Source: Stewart A, Dinwiddie A, Wisdom A, Gilson T. Notes from the Field:
Drug Overdose Deaths in Hotels and Motels — United States, 2022–2024. MMWR,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.*