Drug Overdoses
Don't forget the opioid epidemic as we battle COVID-19 pandemic
Coronavirus pandemic has pressed many people suffering from substance use disorders to the breaking point. We need to make sure they're taken care of.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito
Opinion contributor
The United States passed grim milestone after grim milestone over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. People were forced to live in the shadows, exist in isolation and were oftentimes driven to the brink of despair.
As a result, our nation passed a different, albeit equally heartbreaking milestone: a record number of Americans dying as a result of a drug overdose.
Between April 2020 and April 2021, drugs – mostly synthetic opioids such as fentanyl – took the lives of more than 100,000 of our sons and daughters, loved ones and neighbors, community members and friends. America’s other epidemic – our addiction epidemic – is not confined to a particular subset of our population. No, the plague of drug overdose deaths does not discriminate.