Fentanyl fueled unprecedented carnage with 112,000 fatal overdoses. The nation is increasingly divided over how to respond.

When the history of the fentanyl crisis is written, 2023 may be remembered as the year Americans woke up to an unprecedented threat scouring communities - and a deepening cultural divide over what to do about it.

For the first time in U.S. history, fatal overdoses peaked above 112,000 deaths, with young people and people of color among the hardest hit.

Drug policy experts, and people living with addiction, say the magnitude of this calamity now eclipses every previous drug epidemic, from the 1980s to the prescription opioid crisis of the 2000s.

“We’ve had an entire community swept away,” said Louise Vincent, a harm reduction activist in North Carolina, who says she still sometimes uses street opioids including fentanyl.

  • @butterflyattack
    2•1 year ago

    When I had a habit this was often the case. If someone overdosed on a batch people tended to assume it was good stuff. Not necessary for anyone to die and even before narcan most overdoses were survivable. You’ve got to appreciate that unless you have a fairly reliable source, heroin can run the spectrum from pretty decent to completely useless. It’s not a happy feeling when you profoundly need a hit and you’ve spent your last money on stuff that doesn’t work at all. After this has happened a few times you’ll jump at the word of someone having strong stuff.