Drug Overdose Deaths Climb During Pandemic
Summary from the AllSides News Team
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From the Left
What’s behind the historic spike in drug overdose deaths under COVID-19In a year when the coronavirus has racked up an unbearable death toll, recent preliminary data from the federal government suggests an overlap with another staggering figure: More Americans died from drug overdose in a 12-month period than at any other point in history.
While the vaccination of more than 1 million Americans in recent days is buoying hope that health officials could be gaining a foothold over the pandemic, the same can’t be said for the opioid crisis, which has been killing people for far longer than COVID-19 and...
From the Right
Lockdown Measures Catastrophic for Recovering Addicts, Mental HealthOverseeing sober living homes for newly recovering drug addicts is difficult in the best of times. But the endless shutdowns have created conditions that are challenging for healthy people, let alone those who are fresh out of rehab, vulnerable, and still reeling.
Matt Royce, 35, oversees seven sober-living homes in Minneapolis. All of his houses, each holding between 9 and 13 people, have been “pretty full the whole time.”
No overdose deaths had occurred in his homes in almost three years, but last summer he lost two people, while another...
From the Left
San Francisco struggles to stem ‘horrific’ uptick in opioid overdoses, drug abuseIn early 2019, a formerly homeless man named Tom Wolf posted a thank-you on Twitter to the cop who had arrested him the previous spring, when he was strung out in a doorway with 103 tiny bundles of heroin and cocaine in a plastic baggie at his feet.
“You saved my life,” wrote Wolf, who had finally gotten clean after that bust and 90 days in jail, ending six months of sleeping on scraps of cardboard on the sidewalk.
Today, he joins a growing chorus of people, including San Francisco’s...
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