“The study included 2,653 drug seizures and 1,833 opioid-related deaths from 2020 to 2023. “Within the surrounding 100, 250, and 500 meters,” RTI International researcher Alex H. Kral and his two co-authors reported in JAMA Network Open on Wednesday, “drug seizures were associated with a statistically significant increase in the relative risk for fatal opioid overdoses.””
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“Prohibition makes drug use more dangerous by creating a black market in which quality and potency are highly variable and unpredictable. Ramped-up enforcement of prohibition magnifies that problem, as dramatically demonstrated by the deadly impact of restricting access to pain medication at the same time that illicit fentanyl was proliferating as a heroin booster and substitute.”
“In addition to tracking deaths attributed to COVID-19, researchers aim to account for those missed by formal diagnoses by calculating excess deaths. Excess deaths are typically defined as the number of deaths during a particular period above the usual, expected number of deaths under normal conditions.”
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“A February 2024 article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculated excess deaths between March 2020 and August 2022, concluding that around 1.2 million Americans had died of COVID-19. A January 2025 analysis in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Statistics in Society Series A calculated excess pandemic mortality in the United States for 2020 and 2021 at 920,731. Interestingly, Stanford biostatistician John Ioannidis, a skeptic of worst-case COVID-19 pandemic claims, and his colleagues calculated in a December 2023 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article that the U.S. suffered 1,220,295 excess deaths between 2020 and 2023. Notably, they also calculated that the U.S. actually experienced 3,456 fewer than expected deaths of Americans aged 14 and under during that period. Considering that all of these calculations use data from 2023 or earlier, they suggest that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current count of 1,225,281 American deaths from COVID-19 and related causes is somewhat conservative.”
“When President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Pam Bondi as attorney general, he extolled her “incredible job” in “work[ing] to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs and reduc[ing] the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths.” Yet those deaths exploded on Bondi’s watch as Florida’s attorney general.”
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“Bondi’s fans praised her for cracking down on “pill mills,” which may have made it harder for nonmedical drug consumers (as well as bona fide patients) to obtain prescription opioids such as hydrocodone and oxycodone. But the result was increased consumption of black market alternatives, which are much more dangerous because their quality and potency are highly variable and unpredictable. That hazard was magnified by the simultaneous proliferation of illicit fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute—a development that likewise was driven by prohibition, which favors more potent drugs that are easier to conceal and smuggle.”
“Experts say they see peaks and valleys with these kinds of illnesses over the years, but there have been about 6,600 cases already in 2025, almost four times the number at this point last year.”
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“Concerned about increasing cases, experts are urging vaccination.
The US had more than 200,000 cases of whooping cough every year before the vaccine was introduced. By 1948, the vaccine was widely used, and infection rates began to drop.”
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“Boosters are recommended because protection from the vaccine can fade over time, which may be one reason for the ongoing outbreaks.
Declining vaccination rates are another reason. The percentage of US kindergartners who received the DTaP vaccine has steadily declined over the past five years, leaving thousands vulnerable to infection.
Organizers within the state say that although many people have become hesitant about vaccinations, another issue is a lack of access.”
“The attack on Nimruz was, in fact, worse than what came before. Rather than the usual strikes on empty buildings at night, the U.S. military bombed buildings full of people during the day, and it was “the first time that UNAMA had received allegations of civilian casualties of such a scale,” according to the UNAMA report.”
“Monitoring groups including Syria Network for Human Rights (SNHR) – an independent UK-based group – said over 1,000 people died in the violence, more than half killed by forces aligned with the new authorities and others by Assad loyalists. SNHR said the dead included 595 civilians and unarmed fighters, the vast majority Alawite.”
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“The mass killings were mostly carried out by gunmen from various factions aligned with the new government, including GSS, according to several of the witnesses.”