Fentanyl’s Wake
26th May 2022
News accounts shows drug deaths have spiked everywhere. The year we lost my sister more than 65,000 people overdosed and died. That’s skyrocketed to more than 100,000 people during the 12-month period ending April 2021. That’s nearly 300 people each day.
We live in an age of data visualization, so the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers an?interactive dashboard?with provisional counts of drug overdose deaths. As jarring and important as the statistics are, it’s imperative we don’t forget that each one of these is a life lost, forever. Nearly 100,000 unique individuals—with inherent value, talents, dreams, desires—vanquished by a nearly invisible foe.
It takes only 2 milligrams to be lethal. That’s not even enough to cover the year on the front of the penny in your pocket.