FT Article - 4 Jan 20225 Jan 2022 15:44
Interesting article in yesterday's FT (part of article shown below) about the worsening drug addiction crisis in USA. Record 100,000 deaths in 12 months mainly from use of opioids. This is impacting on US policy makers to start addressing the issue as a public health issue rather than a criminal one. INDV have been advocating this response for some time & its products are in the forefront of the battle against opioid dependency.
"It is not just Philadelphia. On average more than 270 people — the equivalent of 10 or 12 high school classes — overdosed and died in the US every day in the year to April 2021. This added up to a new record annual toll of more than 100,000 lives in a country caught in the grip of an addiction crisis. Almost two-thirds of those deaths were caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid which can be 50 times as potent as heroin and has recently displaced other legally prescribed painkillers as the biggest driver of fatal overdoses.
Health experts say that some of those who died probably didn’t even know they were consuming fentanyl, which has become a common contaminant in a range of street drugs from counterfeit pills to cocaine. Many overdose victims are recovering addicts who relapsed during the pandemic, they add.
The mounting death toll has alarmed US policymakers, who had hoped that a crackdown on doctor and pharmacy “shopping” by prescription painkiller users and multibillion dollar settlements with pharmaceutical companies would ease an opioid crisis that has claimed more than 500,000 lives over the past decade.
Instead, the crisis has worsened. And is accelerating a shift by some state and federal authorities to address the problem as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice one: to accept illegal drug use takes place, aim to minimise its effects via harm reduction policies and save lives."
Sign In
Follow the stocks
