Stephan: Even greater than the gun deaths are the drug overdose deaths. The reality, which few want to discuss is that Americans are miserable. Because the entire tax system and the pay scale are rigged to favor the rich, wealth inequality has condemned millions to poverty or near poverty. What about the middle class you ask? Since Reagan and very deliberately thanks to Republican economics the middle class has been diminished. You have a handful of individuals so rich they can afford to run their own space programs, while one in seven children face food insecurity. And because we don't have a healthcare system in the United States only an illness profit system, mental health just isn't of much interest to that system, except for pharmaceuticals that tweak your consciousness. So is it a surprise that the poor and stressed self-medicate themselves to death.
What I don't understand is why Americans don't seem to understand this. How is it possible that year after year they vote for Republicans who are largely responsible for creating the mess we are in? I don't know but by gun or pill it is literally killing us.
A sign calling attention to drug overdoses is posted to the door of a gas station on the White Earth Reservation in Ogema, Minn. Credit: David Goldman/AP
More Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021 than any previous year, a grim milestone in an epidemic that has now claimed 1 million lives in the 21st century, according to federal data released Wednesday.
More than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, up 15 percent from the previous year, according to an estimate released by the National Center for Health Statistics. The tally of 107,622 reflects challenges exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic: lost access to treatment, social isolation and a more potent drug supply.
More than 80,000 people died using opioids, including prescription pain pills and fentanyl, a deadly drug 100 times as powerful as morphine and increasingly present in other drugs. Deaths from methamphetamine and cocaine also rose.
Since the start of the 21st century, an overdose epidemic led by prescription pain pills and followed by waves of heroin, fentanyl and meth has killed […]
This is a system created and maintained by both political parties over the decades. It has proven useful to them to demonize the other and vie for power. There is plenty of blame to go around.
Albus Eddie
on Friday, May 13, 2022 at 5:26 am
What we repress as a society and culture comes back to us in the form of demons.
Rev. Dean
on Friday, May 13, 2022 at 3:44 pm
The Veterans administration from Oklahoma killed my Step-son by getting him hooked on pure Morphine which he would shoot into his veins and his last act on this Earth was to die on his brother’s couch with a needle in his arm. I hate the Doctor who gave him that prescription.
This is a system created and maintained by both political parties over the decades. It has proven useful to them to demonize the other and vie for power. There is plenty of blame to go around.
What we repress as a society and culture comes back to us in the form of demons.
The Veterans administration from Oklahoma killed my Step-son by getting him hooked on pure Morphine which he would shoot into his veins and his last act on this Earth was to die on his brother’s couch with a needle in his arm. I hate the Doctor who gave him that prescription.