People in Baltimore have been dying of overdoses at a rate never before seen in a major American city.
Baltimore’s fatal overdose rate has quadrupled since 2013. It dipped in 2022, but preliminary data for 2023, not shown below, indicates overdoses were on track to rise again.
In the past six years, nearly 6,000 lives have been lost.
The death rate from 2018 to 2022 was nearly double that of any other large city, and higher than nearly all of Appalachia during the prescription pill crisis, the Midwest during the height of rural meth labs or New York during the crack epidemic.
A decade ago, 700 fewer people here were being killed by drugs each year. And when fatalities began to rise from the synthetic opioid fentanyl, so potent that even minuscule doses are deadly, Baltimore’s initial response was hailed as a national model.
The city set ambitious goals, distributed Narcan widely, experimented with ways to steer people into treatment and ratcheted up campaigns to alert the public.
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Our government is far more interested in funding wars overseas than they are in taking care of Americans or giving us hope.
@Freedom762yrs2Y
The government shouldn't be involved in overseas wars OR taking care of us or giving us hope.
@MadFerretDemocrat2yrs2Y
The USA is unusual for having by far the highest healthcare spending in the world — around 100% higher per person than the developed world average. If the US healthcare sector on its own were a country, its GDP would be higher than all the world's nations apart from the USA and China.
This isn't a problem caused by spending too much on aid and not enough on healthcare or on policing— the USA spends much less on aid as a percentage of GDP than other developed nations, less than 0.3% of GDP most years (the UN target for developed nations is 0.7%)
@RepublicGrizzlyGreen2yrs2Y
“And when fatalities began to rise…Baltimore’s initial response was hailed as a national model.”
Looking at that graph of ODs, I fail to see a moment where this supposed “model” public health response was effective, nor do I see a moment at which it was abandoned due to other priorities.
It appears wholly unaffected by either action or inaction on the part of public health and local government.
This is what happens when a minority population will only elect minority leaders afraid to adopt hard line policies for fear of being accused of discrimination. The drug trade in Baltimore has been normalized by its residents for decades, the high death rate is not surprising.
@CaucusLukeGreen2yrs2Y
What is the impact on these children? Raised in household with drug addicted, often unmarried parents, then going to school and being expected to focus on lessons in a large classroom.
They, and many of their classmates, unable for all kinds of reasons to succeed academically, do poorly on tests, often drop out, and their teachers are blamed.
When is society going to assume a certain level of personal responsibility and stop blaming the availability of drugs as the root cause of the overdoses?
A horrifying example of politicians telling people what they want to hear (won’t prosecute drug use) and then playing ostrich (“would have had hearings if I knew we were an outlier”) when it goes horribly wrong. Being an “outlier” is irrelevant when 6000 people die. Doesn’t he walk the streets and see it? And to say he would hold hearings - as if that’s going to do anything.
Maybe it’s time for politicians to start doing their jobs instead of campaigning to keep their jobs.
@ISIDEWITH2yrs2Y
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