The number of opioid deaths in D.C. jumped 12 percent to 518 last year, the fifth consecutive year of increases since fentanyl became the predominant drug in overdoses.
With more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in one year, communities need more than 'just say no' drug prevention education and abstinence-only addiction treatment to save lives, an expert has warned.
Harsh New Restrictions in West Virginia Show Just How Fragile Needle Exchange Programs Can Be
Courtesy of SOAR
Joe Solomon is the co-director of SOAR, a syringe-exchange and harm-reduction services group in Charleston, the capital of largely poor and rural West Virginia. When I spoke to Solomon in late March, SOAR was handing out large supplies of clean needles to hundreds of injection drug users (IDUs), many of them experiencing poverty and homelessness, in a region long known for having an overdose fatality crisis as well as the kind of HIV outbreak among IDUs that has become rare in the age of widespread needle exchange. SOAR also distributed large amounts of Narcan, which people who use drugs can easily administer to one another to reverse opioid overdoses.
George Floyd s addiction could change how we talk about drug use and Black Americans Cristina Silva, USA TODAY
Like millions of Americans, George Floyd lived with the torment of drug addiction.
He and his girlfriend, Courteney Ross, became addicted to opioids four years ago after they were both prescribed for chronic pain. When the prescriptions ran out, they turned to illegal drug use, she said. They tried to go clean, then failed. They tried again, but could not stop for long.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the United States, Floyd, the father of two young daughters, started using again during a dark time: he lost his job as a nightclub security guard because of quarantine shutdowns, he was hospitalized for several days after an overdose, he found out he had the coronavirus. On the day he died, his neck trapped under the knee of former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin for more than nine minutes, he had fentanyl and methamphetamine in