2021 now deadliest year for illicit-drug overdoses in B.C., after record 201 deaths in October, coroner says
CBC News, December 9th, 2021
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-toxic-drugs-oct-2021-1.6279018
As the number of people dying from illicit drug overdoses in British Columbia continues to climb to grim heights, the province’s coroner is calling for an urgent and immediate response from all levels of government to expand safe supply.
“Simply put we are failing,” said B.C. chief coroner Lisa Lapointe. “With six people now dying every single day in our province, the status quo cannot be accepted.”
Numbers released from the B.C. Coroners Service show a death toll through the first ten months of 2021 of 1,782, surpassing the 1,765 deaths recorded in all of 2020.
Total Numbers of Covid deaths since start of pandemic in BC:
Discover What Killed More Adults Than COVID-19
https://mommyunderground.com/shocking-discover-what-killed-more-adults-than-covid
The media tends to fixate on things they can manipulate, stories they can sell the public to keep up viewer ratings.
Unfortunately, these issues aren’t always the ones citizens should be focusing on.
There is one epidemic the United States is currently facing that has ripped apart more families than the current pandemic- and no one is hearing about it!
COVID-19 has been a dark cloud over this nation and around the world as many lives were tragically lost in its wake.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced there has been 53,000 COVID-19 deaths among individuals ages 19 to 49 between January 1, 2020 and December 15, 2021.
While these numbers are staggering and every death is tragic, there is another leading cause of death that hasn’t been widely talked about.
Fox News reports:
“Fentanyl overdoses have surged to the leading cause of death for adults between the ages of 18 and 45, according to an analysis of U.S. government data.”
In the same time frame as the reported COVID-19 deaths, nearly 79,000 people between the ages of 18 and 45 have died from fentanyl overdoses, according to data collected from the opioid awareness organization Families Against Fentanyl.
What exactly is the deadly drug fentanyl?
It is a synthetic opioid that can take the life of a user in even the smallest doses, and the risk of death is amplified when it is mixed with other drugs such as heroin, meth, or marijuana.
Fentanyl is not primarily made in the United States but is smuggled in mainly from Mexico and China, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
United States drug overdose death rates and totals over time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_drug_overdose
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has data on drug overdose death rates and totals:
Over 1,015,000 US residents died from drug overdoses from 1968 to 2019.
Nearly 841,000 from 1999 through 2019.
22 people out of every 100,000 died from drug overdoses in 2019 in the US.
Opioids were involved in 70.6% (nearly 50,000) of the nearly 71,000 deaths in 2019.
Around 100,300 died in the 12 month period ending May 31, 2021 — that’s 275 a day.
Fentanyl. 2 mg. A lethal dose in most people. Diameter of a US penny is 19.05 mm, or 0.75 inches.
Calling Archangels Michael
Raphael, Uriel, Jophiel & Gabrielle:
Make it below as it is above
That truth will and does reign
That peace will be re-anchored
Ohio police post graphic photo of overdosed parents in SUV with 4-year-old child in backseat
By Staff, The Associated Press, September 11, 2016
The photo of a man and a woman passed out in the front seat of a vehicle while a 4-year-old is strapped in a car seat in the back is raising a lot of eyebrows, and a lot of questions. The Ohio police department that released this picture says they had to release the photo to show the real face of addiction, but experts say public shaming isn’t the answer. Mike LeCouteur reports – Sep 10, 2016
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio — An Ohio police department says it’s trying to show the impact of the heroin and painkiller epidemic by sharing photos of a 4-year-old boy sitting in a vehicle behind slumped-over adults who were later revived with an overdose antidote.
East Liverpool police say in a Facebook message they’re sorry if people are offended but they want the public to see what happens and they want to be a voice for the boy who witnessed the scene.
“We feel it necessary to show the other side of this horrible drug. We feel we need to be a voice for the children caught up in this horrible mess,” said the city in the Facebook post.
“This child can’t speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody.”
Police say an officer watched the vehicle weave erratically and stop, then approached and noticed signs the driver was impaired. The officer says the driver indicated he was taking his unconscious female passenger to a hospital, then became unresponsive himself.
The officer called paramedics, who revived the pair.
“We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non-drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis,” the city said in a statement.
Tracing the US opioid crisis to its roots
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02686-2
In 2015, something happened in the United States that hadn’t occurred there in the past 100 years: life expectancy entered a period of sustained decline.
According to the World Bank Group, the country’s average life expectancy fell from 78.8 years in 2014 to 78.7 years in 2015, and then to 78.5 years in 2016 and 2017.
In most high-income countries, life expectancy has been increasing, gradually but steadily, for decades. The last time that life expectancy in the United States showed a similar decline was in 1915–18, as a result of military deaths in the First World War and the 1918 influenza pandemic.
This time, the culprit has been a surge of drug overdoses and suicides, both linked to the use of opioid drugs.
The death rate from drug overdoses more than tripled between 1999 and 2017, and that from opioid overdoses increased almost sixfold during the same period.