There’s a great deal of pain in Huntington, West Virginia. For decades, the city of 45,000 people on the banks of the Ohio river has experienced the kind of economic decline typical of this corner of America, where the coal seams of Appalachia meet the Midwestern rust belt. Poor, shrinking and home to blue-collar workers who battle chronic pain and ill health, Huntington has proved as susceptible as anywhere to America’s lethal opioid crisis. So susceptible, in fact, that the city’s own leadership describes Huntington as “Ground Zero” for the opioid epidemic.
The past pandemic year has brought with it a wave of viral metaphors to describe various social problems: economic inequality and racial injustice are clumsily referred to as America’s “other pandemics”, while police violence is frequently characterised as an “epidemic”. In many cases, such language is overwrought and overblown.
But when it comes to the lethal problem of America’s opioid addiction, “epidemic” is no misnomer. According to the Center for Disease Control, almost half a million Americans have died of opioid overdoses since the late Nineties, making this the deadliest drug crisis in the country’s history. By the end of the last decade, overdoses were America’s leading cause of accidental death — and nowhere is this more clear than in Huntington.
Yet the relationship between the pandemic and the opioid epidemic is more than merely analogous. In a tragic demonstration of the inescapable trade-offs of fighting a plague, Covid-19 and the steps taken to slow its spread have undone much of the hard-earned progress in the fight against opioid addiction. According to preliminary CDC data, more than 90,000 Americans died of drug overdose — the vast majority because of opioids — in the 12 months leading to November 2020: a 30% increase on the previous 12 months, and the highest annual overdose figure ever.
While opioids have wrought national devastation, overdose rates were higher in West Virginia than anywhere else in the country last year. Huntington and surrounding Cabell County had the highest rate in the state, with 163 deaths per 100,000 people — the overwhelming majority of them from Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine, which can be lethal in doses as small as two milligrams. In Cabell County, Covid-19 and drug overdoses claimed roughly the same number of lives last year.
Pastor Steven Little doesn’t need to see the numbers to understand the magnitude of Huntington’s spike last year. As a volunteer on the city’s Quick Response Team, his weekly schedule reflects the fluctuations of drug abuse in the area. QRT was founded in 2017 and aims to provide follow-up visits to anyone who calls the emergency services for a drug overdose within 72 hours. The busier the team, Little explains, the worse things are.
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SubscribeIts appalling that regulation and changes in practice is so slow and inadequate for such a deadly prescription. I guess vested interests play a big part and who are the majority of the victims…
Its Chinese Fentanyl killing them!
“Cabell County had the highest rate in the state, with 163 deaths per 100,000 people — the overwhelming majority of them from Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine,” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OVERWHELMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FENTANYL!!!!!!!
The insane war against legal pain killers is just that – war against those who suffer chronic pain.
It is the corrupt law industry which picks off any company which shows a vulnerability to hipped up negative, emotional, sentiment, and thus being sued for massive $$$$ in class action suites.
The Legal painkilling industry is the biggest blessing for those on chronic pain, and if people abuse them, well scr*w them, it is not the people in pain who deserve punishing.
Try to get ‘narcotic’ meds in USA or UK now because of these predatory lawyers – as enabled by the writer of this AGENDA driven distortion (he always infers it is legal pain meds, but is forced, in the quote above, that it really is Illegal Mex and Chinese drugs which are the actual problem, what a tool he is)
People needing ‘narcotic’ pain meds, or sleep meds are SCR*WD! Try getting a British GP to give you pain or sleep meds – they will not, just like USA, the law industry, and corrupt politicos (Like what they have done to UK over the plandemic of covid too) are punishing the innocent to pander to the ‘All criminals and failures are victims’ cult! It is all about $$$$$$$, it is about the law firms suing the drug companies and Porsches and Hoo*ers for everyone. (although the Pharma industry is corrupt to the core, just like the Military Industrial Complex, as covid showed very clearly!)
Criminals are the true victim in your twisted society’s thinking – they were not given opportunity, they were oppressed, …..sniff, poor criminals, and their victims probably deserve it anyway – INSANE. Woke insanity.
So you don’t think society affects human behaviour at all, it’s all down to personal responsibility and everybody just needs to pull their socks up and get on with it?
In that case, why are levels of opioid addiction so much higher in run down rust belt areas, with little in the way of jobs or opportunities, than they are in wealthy suburbs?
“So you don’t think society affects human behaviour at all,”
I said that?
I know that apples do not fall far from the tree for the most part, unless they grow on a hill, or animals carry them off…..
Paying unemployable, or under-employable, to have children makes for unemployable, or under-employable, children to a great part. People are what their parents and peers are to the greater degree. University Professors have University graduate children. Most people in Prisons doing hard time had parents (or close relatives) who did time.
I know this. I have been amongst a huge variety of peoples, from the greatest geographical ranges to the weirdest cultures, to oddest religions, and people are pretty much always what they were raised to be.
That these guys were set up to fail by their upbringing is of no doubt to me.
That we make laws for the normal people based on these guys failings makes no sense.
“Hard cases make bad law
Hard cases make bad law is an adage or legal maxim. The phrase means that an extreme case is a poor basis for a general law that would cover a wider range of less extreme cases.”
I work in Cape Breton NS as a doc. We were ground zero in Canada for the opioid epidemic – the equivalent of Appalachia in the USA. The problem still remains here. We haven’t solved it. “Cottonland” was a great documentary about the issue here. My own aunt was caught in the trap.
As a doc, I blame our profession as being a significant part of lighting this fire, but the dry kindling was there thanks to unemployment, disintegration of social structures, and the god-shaped hole in our hearts (I’m not religious per se, but I know we lost something big in our communities and our personal lives when people started shopping on Sundays instead of attending church).
The solutions are NOT easy. And I don’t think they are to be found in a methadone or suboxone bottle, even though we pat ourselves on the shoulder for having so many people dependent on these alternative opioids.
In June I had an operation, after which I was given a packet of Oxycontin to take with me, but I was so worried by its reputation that when I got home I chucked it in the bin.
I am a victim, PAY me! I dropped out of school am a drug addict, no job, no skills, am unemployable, and it is YOUR FAULT!!!~ NOW Give Me Some $$$$$$!!!! BIT* CH!
Really? Just that?
“People prescribed an oxycodone-based painkiller may be suffering from cancer, arthritis, or other physical disorders, or they may receive a short-term prescription after surgery or trauma. Prescription forms of oxycodone are designed to provide around-the-clock relief.”
“The transition from use to abuse to addiction can be a quick and dangerous road. Oxycodone is a powerful drug and offers much-needed relief to many people struggling with painful or terminal conditions; as such, it can be hard to stay in control.”
Try a day in a clinic. Real life is a bit more sad than such easy condemnation.
OK, so you are an ex addict? I have worked and hung with more addicts than most have ever seen, ‘Try a day in a clinic’ WTF? I have been addicted, AND I have have had chronic pain from really bad injuries which totaled years of pain (now over). I know more than 99.% on both. I never abused pain meds – they were tools helping me to survive.
I got addicted by being a idiot stoner, and lived amongst addicts decades as I mixed in odd worlds most of my life – and in construction I used to work a Lot with ex-cons and meth/crack addicted ex-cons, and stoners, and general addicts, and in life I was one of them. I know these guys in the article as a type, I was down with their ilk a lot during my down and out years in the USA South – do you know these people? Do you know chronic pain? Do you know chronic pain meds and the blessing they bring in allowing one to sleep, and chronic (chronic means it does not stop) pain is HELL if you cannot get some relief from it and get some sleep, but have to deal with endless pain and never a rest in escaping it…..
PS, love the guy’s tattoo – it is finally ‘Truth in Tattoo’ as all you silly women with your cute body tattoos think you are all rebellions and edgy – you are just wearing the same tattoo as this guy, but yours just tries to be more subtle, but it actually is saying the same thing……..