addiction
FCC Commissioner: The Internet Shouldn’t Be a ‘Partisan Pinball’
Dec. 12, 2017: FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel will be voting on the future of net neutrality this week. She discusses what’s at stake, and how it will impact the lives of all Americans. Plus, the Republican strategy with minority voters; remembering the life and legacy of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee; the future of democracy in Zimbabwe; dissecting the link between healthcare and employment; and why language matters so much when we talk about addiction.
As Campaigns Leave New Hampshire, The Heroin Epidemic Remains
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The United States is in the midst of a growing drug epidemic. Heroin use among young adults has doubled in the last decade, though the problem reaches individuals of every age group, gender, and income level.
“Since 2000, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137 percent, including a 200 percent increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin),” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
One state with an acute sense of this crisis is New Hampshire, where rates of drug overdoses and deaths have skyrocketed. At least 385 New Hampshirites died from drug overdoses in 2015, according to the most recent data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Drug deaths have surpassed the number of traffic deaths in the Granite State.
Todd Zwillich spent Sunday morning with one family who knows all to well the impact of addiction. Bill and Jo-Ann Brewster both work in healthcare and have seen the devastating consequences of the heroin epidemic on the job. But they also have deeply personal connection to the issue: Their son Zach Brewster has struggled for years with addiction.
“I think years ago the candidates probably would never have mentioned [heroin] because it would be a black mark,” Jo-Ann tells The Takeaway. “But today people are coming out and accepting it and realizing it’s not just that poor homeless kid on the street. These are people, and it’s stealing all of our lives.”
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Searching for Solutions as Heroin Claims 10,000 Lives
Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.
The New Hampshire primaries has drawn renewed attention to the vast heroin addiction that has swept not just the Granite State, but the entire country.
Heroin addiction is nothing new, but the recent shift from the inner city to suburbia and rural America has drawn not only attention in an election year, but criticism that the crisis was ignored when it was an “urban” problem. The epidemic, once labeled a “War on Drugs,” is now deemed a public health crisis, something that’s brought a new emphasis on treatment and prevention versus enforcement and incarceration.
Criticism notwithstanding, heroin overdoses have killed more than 10,000 people nationwide in 2015, and the current crises is drawing new scrutiny toward opioid prescription use. Now policy makers, medical providers, and politicians are urgently looking for new answers to tackle a growing problem.
On Tuesday, the Director of National Drug Control Policy, Michael Botticelli, announced an increase of nearly $1.1 billion for prevention and treatment in combating the prescription opioid and heroin use epidemic.
What changes in U.S. policy can help contain the heroin crisis? For answers, we turn to Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy and director of the Crime Reduction and Justice Initiative at New York University’s Marron Institute. He is also editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis.
What you’ll learn from this segment:
What policy changes are currently be considered.
The role that physicians are playing in this problem.
Whether changes in enforcement and/or decriminalization would aid the problem.
The figure above is a bar chart showing the total number of U.S. overdose deaths involving heroin from 2001 to 2014.
(National Institute on Drug Abuse)
The Capitalist and The Socialist, Cybersecurity, National Parks
February 10, 2016: 1. First-Time Voters Stir Revolution in Both Parties | 2. Searching for Solutions as Heroin Claims 10,000 Lives | 3. Supreme Court Issues Blow to Obama’s Climate Legacy | 4. Obama Invests $19 Billion in U.S. Cybersecurity | 5. Road Trip Adventure Celebrates 100 Years of National Parks