In the sad geography of America’s opioid-overdose crisis, Ohio is at the center of the map. In 2015, 2,700 of its people died from prescription and illicit opioids, a number far higher than any other state and one that shot up by 28 percent in one year.
In response, Gov. John Kasich signed a bill this month to expand access to the treatment drug naloxone, therapy, and social supports.
Why more than 50,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2015, and why Ohio — or Massachusetts, for that matter — has opioid death rates 12 times that of California or Texas are critical questions. But just as critical is preventing and treating the nation’s 2.6 million opioid addicts and other users, reducing the availability of illicit drugs like heroin, reversing the prescription frenzy that now results in about one opioid prescription per year for every adult American, and fighting the lobbying behemoth of pharmaceutical companies making prescription painkillers like OxyContin and fentanyl.
Continue reading at the Toledo Blade
