Drug Overdose Deaths Climb During Pandemic

In 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...

In 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...