When the history of the fentanyl crisis is written, 2023 may be remembered as the year Americans woke up to an unprecedented threat scouring communities - and a deepening cultural divide over what to do about it.
For the first time in U.S. history, fatal overdoses peaked above 112,000 deaths, with young people and people of color among the hardest hit.
Drug policy experts, and people living with addiction, say the magnitude of this calamity now eclipses every previous drug epidemic, from the 1980s to the prescription opioid crisis of the 2000s.
“We’ve had an entire community swept away,” said Louise Vincent, a harm reduction activist in North Carolina, who says she still sometimes uses street opioids including fentanyl.
Still kills less than booze, but it’s starting to compete
As insane as this is, fentanyl has surpassed alcohol deaths.
And alcohol is massively damaging. Just want to put that in perspective. So I guess booze up cause alcoholics have to catch up?
I’m convinced this is actually a suicide epidemic, not just an overdose epidemic.
The best advertising a dealer can get is to have someone die from their batch.
The best advertising a dealer can get is to have someone die from their batch.
Any source on that.
I was paraphrasing a Vice article.
… though now that you mention it, it’s not sourced in Vice either. Just: “All of my heroin friends wanted to try the stuff that had killed the guy in M’s bed.” So take that with a grain of salt I guess.