President Joe Biden spoke too soon on the most recent “60 Minutes” when he said that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over.” Most experts say the evolving virus still is a significant threat, noting that about 400 people still die every day from COVID-19.
As of Friday, about a quarter of all state residents — 3.24 million — had been infected and more than 47,000 had died of COVID-19.
There is a restored sense of some normalcy in terms of most people’s daily lives. So now there is space for government at every level to more aggressively attack another deadly epidemic — opioid addiction — that grew far worse as public health resources shifted to the coronavirus contagion.
In 2021, 5,168 Pennsylvanians died from opioid overdoses, according to the state attorney general’s office, with a significant majority due to the powerful synthetic drug fentanyl.
The opioid epidemic itself has evolved. It grew from 2010 through 2019 as people became addicted to prescription pain relievers and then moved on to heroin because it is cheaper and more accessible. Governments and the medical and pharmacy industries effectively responded with technology to track prescriptions and prescribing protocols to limit the circulation of prescription opioids.
Now the problem primarily is illicit drugs including heroin and, especially, fentanyl. The state attorney general’s office seized more fentanyl during the first three months of this year than in all of 2021, 40 times the amount of heroin that it seized.
Distributors and dealers cut fentanyl into other drugs to increase their potency and their own profits. But users often don’t know that and unknowingly overdose. The state Legislature recently altered a law that had defined fentanyl test strips as drug paraphernalia, which could help users determine if drugs are laced with fentanyl and prevent overdose deaths.
The White House also recently announced distribution of $1.5 billion to ramp up opioid treatment and prevention, more than $80.7 million of which will go to hard-hit Pennsylvania.
As they did when the primary issue was prescription opioids, state and federal legislators and policymakers must evolve with the crisis to reduce fentanyl imports and vastly increase treatment to reduce demand.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre via TNS
