Do People Support This?

Public Opinion on Overdose Response

Eighty percent of voters support creating Quick Response Teams in their community.¹ That support spans party, race, gender, age, and educational attainment.² In Harris County, Texas, 88% of residents said overdose response units would be “effective” at “making Harris County safer.”²⁹ A separate survey of 1,004 city residents found nearly eight in ten said their city should use a public health approach to prevent overdose deaths.³ By at least a two-to-one margin, city residents favor treating drug addiction and overdose as a health issue rather than a criminal one, a finding that held in both the 2024 and 2025 waves of the survey.⁴

When asked about specific overdose prevention tools, residents expressed the most comfort with naloxone distribution, fentanyl test strips, and medications to treat addiction, the tools most closely associated with overdose response teams.⁵ These are supplies that prevent overdose deaths and connect people to treatment, not supplies that facilitate drug use; overdose response teams do not distribute pipes, foils, or needles. A separate poll of 1,704 registered voters tested attitudes toward expanded naloxone access after exposing respondents to strong arguments for and against. Two-thirds sided with expanding access, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans.⁶

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The National Context: Addiction Touches Most Americans

The public support for overdose response teams sits inside a broader shift in how Americans think about addiction. A 2023 KFF tracking poll found that 29% of adults say they or someone in their family has been addicted to opioids, with the rate highest among rural residents (42%) and White adults (33%).²⁷ Nine in ten Americans (90%) support addiction treatment centers in their community, and 82% support making naloxone freely available in places like bars, health clinics, and fire stations.²⁷ Those numbers hold across partisan lines: at least three-quarters of Democrats, Republicans, and independents support both policies.²⁷

The personal experience numbers have shifted over time. Pew’s 2025 Philadelphia Resident Survey found that 44% of city residents personally know someone with opioid use disorder, up from 31% in 2019.²⁸ One in three Philadelphians personally know someone who has died from an overdose.²⁸ The share of residents who recognize opioid use disorder as a chronic health condition rather than a personal failing rose from 39% in 2019 to 51% in 2025.²⁸ When asked directly, 71% of Philadelphians said they would prioritize treatment and health services over arrest for people who use drugs.²⁸

These national and city-level numbers create the floor on which overdose response teams operate. A leader proposing this model is not asking the public to accept a new idea. Majorities already favor the core premise: addiction is a health problem, treatment is the right response, and naloxone should be accessible. The political task is not building support from scratch but connecting the specific program to attitudes the public already holds.

The KFF poll also revealed a key segmentation: rural Americans report the highest personal and family exposure to opioid addiction (42% vs. 23% urban), and they support treatment centers and naloxone access at the same bipartisan rates.²⁷ This matters because overdose response teams are sometimes perceived as urban programs. The data shows the rural need is greater, the rural personal stake is higher, and rural support for the underlying approach is just as strong.

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The Enabling Critique: The One Vulnerability That Matters

More than a third of city residents find the argument that overdose prevention programs “encourage drug use” in their neighborhoods to be “very convincing.”⁷ This is the one political vulnerability a leader needs to prepare for. It cuts deeper than policy disagreement because it frames the program as morally complicit in drug use, not just ineffective or wasteful.

Milwaukee Fire Captain Dave Polachowski has framed his response to the critique this way: “People call it enabling. We don’t look at it like that. We say it’s enabling you to stay alive until you are willing to get treatment.”⁸ His language redefines enabling from a moral accusation to a clinical description: keeping someone alive long enough for treatment readiness to arrive.

The treatment connection data reinforces the counter. Colerain Township reported that 80% of people contacted through follow-up visits between 2015 and 2019 “have gotten into recovery,” according to Assistant Fire Chief Will Mueller.⁹ Coastal Horizons in North Carolina connected 485 of 525 contacted survivors to treatment, a 92% rate.¹⁰ Huntington connected approximately one-third of nearly 1,200 contacted survivors to treatment, the most conservatively measured rate in the field.¹¹ These numbers use different definitions and different denominators, but none describe a model that sustains drug use without providing a pathway out. A leader who can cite local treatment connection rates has a direct counter to the enabling critique.

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Familiarity Increases Support

Fifty-eight percent of city residents say they have heard little or nothing about overdose prevention work in their community.¹² That number is an opportunity, not a problem. In Harris County, Texas, polling on mobile crisis teams showed that support jumped from 78% to 88% after residents learned more about the program.¹³ The BCHC survey found the same pattern for overdose prevention: first-person stories from people who had benefited from naloxone or follow-up services drove “nearly all the positive movement” toward stronger support.¹⁴ Video testimonials were especially effective.¹⁵

The practical implication: in both surveys where respondents received additional information about the programs, support increased rather than decreased.¹³¹⁴ That pattern suggests public education before launch may strengthen support, though the evidence comes from in-survey exposure, not from real-world public education campaigns. The BCHC survey recommended emphasizing “overdose prevention” rather than “harm reduction” as the operative frame. Voters are more likely to think about saving lives when they hear the first term, and more likely to think about enabling when they hear the second.¹⁶

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Bipartisan Champions

Overdose response teams have visible Republican champions, which widens the model’s political base.

New Britain, Connecticut Mayor Erin Stewart, a Republican, set a public goal of reducing opioid deaths by 30% and celebrated when the city achieved a 51% decline.¹⁷ Dr. Rahul Gupta, former White House ONDCP Director, called Huntington’s program one that “should be developed as a model, not just for the state of West Virginia, but for the entire country.”¹⁸ In Colerain Township, Ohio, law enforcement is a formal partner on the Quick Response Team.¹⁹ In Huntington, law enforcement is a formal team member.²⁰

No documented case of organized police union opposition to an overdose response team has appeared in the available evidence, a contrast with the union resistance that mobile crisis programs have faced in cities like Sacramento, where the police officers’ association president publicly opposed restructuring.²⁶ The model does not trigger the policing debate. The fire captain is still running the call. The peer specialist is riding alongside the paramedic, not replacing anyone.

The BCHC survey tested which messages perform best. The “complete strategy” message, connecting short-term harm reduction to long-term solutions like treatment expansion, affordable housing, and jobs, was the most effective framing across nearly every demographic and geographic subgroup.²¹ The “bridge to recovery” message performed especially well with Hispanic/Latino residents and southeastern city residents.²² The “saving lives” message resonated most with Republicans and residents aged 50 to 64.²³

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The “Choice vs. Health” Split

The BCHC 2025 survey surfaced a division in how city residents understand drug use: about half see it primarily as a personal choice, and about half see it primarily as a health problem.²⁴ Both groups still favor a public health approach to overdose prevention.²⁵ But the “choice” voters are more susceptible to the enabling critique and more responsive to messaging that emphasizes treatment connection, accountability, and results rather than messaging that leads with compassion.

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The Bottom Line: Eighty percent of voters support creating Quick Response Teams,¹ and nearly eight in ten city residents favor a public health approach to overdose.³ The model draws bipartisan support with visible Republican champions.¹⁷¹⁸ The one political vulnerability that matters is the enabling critique, which more than a third of voters find “very convincing.”⁷ The counter is operational: treatment connection rates from Colerain (80%),⁹ Coastal Horizons (92%),¹⁰ and Huntington (30%)¹¹ show a model that connects people to recovery, not one that sustains drug use. Familiarity is an asset: support increases when voters learn about the program,¹³ and first-person video testimonials drive the strongest gains.¹⁴ Leaders who invest in public education using the “overdose prevention” frame¹⁶ and the “complete strategy” message²¹ are positioning the program on the strongest available political ground.