[image-1]The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office has essentially been backed into a routine of sending out regular updates on the skyrocketing number of local opiate overdose deaths. It’s a tragic cycle, and one that’s built up a thick and banal workload. (The medical examiner’s office tells Scene that autopsy reports for the many overdose deaths in March and April so far won’t be complete “for months.”)
Between March 30 and April 4, 12 Cuyahoga County residents died of an opiate overdose; heroin and fentanyl — or a combination of the two — are suspected.
This isn’t the first time that we and other local media outlets have reported on a weeklong smattering of overdose deaths.
Scene reported last month on the variety of treatment options that are being used to combat the exploding opiate epidemic in Northeast Ohio — a spectrum of legal efforts aimed at reducing the scourge of addiction.
This article appears in Apr 6-12, 2016.
The overwhelming majority of people who die of so-called ‘overdose’ die either because of the uncertain potency of the drug, the adulterants mixed in or through deliberate, intentional suicide. In reality the difference between a dose that will put an addict on an even keel, or get a user high is very large for opiates. The LD-50 is very high.
Opiate addition is a terrible problem. The people who are dealing with it deserve the chance to overcome it or to even live with it as long as possible. The legal system of prohibition effectively imposes the death sentence on these people. They haven’t anyone but themselves and they don’t deserve this cruelty.
I understand the desire to discourage people from getting into this trap – it is an awful prison. But prohibition robs so many young people (and older people) of the chance to live. We need to end prohibition in a carefully regulated manner.
That has got to be the DUMBEST thing I’ve ever read in my life.