Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerates Construction’s Opioid Addiction Problem
The COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption to daily life hit those with substance-use disorder hard, with deaths by opioid and methamphetamine overdoses increasing 38% and 35%. Construction is among three industries with the most abuse of the drugs
February 15, 2021
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The coronavirus pandemic has been blocking out much of construction’s meager public-health bandwidth while its opioid-addition problem has been accelerating.
“If you do simple math, you’re 15 times more likely to die in construction from opioids than all the other hazards from a job site combined,” Bryan Northrop, executive vice president of Skanska USA told Bisnow.com. “That one statistic should really open everyone’s eyes, but you never see it printed anywhere.”