{"id":3316,"date":"2020-08-26T18:47:40","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T18:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3316"},"modified":"2020-08-26T18:47:40","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T18:47:40","slug":"drug-overdoses-were-increasing-before-covid-19-the-pandemic-made-things-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3316","title":{"rendered":"Drug overdoses were increasing before Covid-19. The pandemic made things worse."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Even before the pandemic, there were signs that the drug overdose crisis was worsening. Preliminary data<\/a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found drug overdose deaths hit 72,000 in 2019, up almost 5 percent from nearly 69,000 in 2018. A preliminary study<\/a> from researchers at Stanford, UCLA, and the Los Angeles LGBT Center found that fentanyl, a synthetic opioid more potent and dangerous than heroin, has started to spread to illegal drug markets in the West \u2014 a trend that will likely cause more overdoses.” 
…
“The demands of social distancing have worsened social isolation, possibly leading more people to use drugs to cope. Social services and addiction treatment programs \u2014 many of which already lacked funding and rigor \u2014 have fallen to the side as the economic collapse has crushed public and private revenues, and social distancing has forced some places to close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the actions that different levels of government have taken to shore up the gaps caused by the pandemic simply haven\u2019t been enough. As experts told me, telemedicine \u2014 while certainly helpful for many and better than nothing \u2014 simply can\u2019t make up for being able to pick up new syringes or naloxone<\/a>, the opioid overdose antidote, at the local needle exchange program<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result: As America sees more than 166,000 Covid-19 deaths (and rising), it\u2019s also suffering tens of thousands of drug overdose deaths due to a decades-old crisis now likely worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/8\/13\/21352838\/drug-overdoses-coronavirus-covid-pandemic-opioid-epidemic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Even before the pandemic, there were signs that the drug overdose crisis was worsening. Preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found drug overdose deaths hit 72,000 in 2019, up almost 5 percent from nearly 69,000 in 2018. A preliminary study from researchers at Stanford, UCLA, and the Los Angeles LGBT Center found that fentanyl, a synthetic opioid more potent and dangerous than heroin, has started to spread to illegal drug markets in the West \u2014 a trend that will likely cause more overdoses.” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The demands of social distancing have worsened social isolation, possibly leading more people to use drugs to cope. Social services and addiction treatment programs \u2014 many of which already lacked funding and rigor \u2014 have fallen to the side as the economic collapse has crushed public and private revenues, and social distancing has forced some places to close.
\nMeanwhile, the actions that different levels of government have taken to shore up the gaps caused by the pandemic simply haven\u2019t been enough. As experts told me, telemedicine \u2014 while certainly helpful for many and better than nothing \u2014 simply can\u2019t make up for being able to pick up new syringes or naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote, at the local needle exchange program.<\/p>\n

The result: As America sees more than 166,000 Covid-19 deaths (and rising), it\u2019s also suffering tens of thousands of drug overdose deaths due to a decades-old crisis now likely worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[588,409,483,53,439],"class_list":["post-3316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-corona","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-deaths","tag-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3317,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316\/revisions\/3317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}