© Reuters
Both heroin and opioid use have exploded in the US, after decades of doctors overprescribing painkillers in the 1990s and 2000s. A report from the CDC released Thursday found that the drug problem has become so deadly that heroin deaths outnumbered gun fatalities last year for the first time in US history.
Until 2007, gun deaths outnumbered heroin deaths five to one, according to the Washington Post. But 2015 saw 12,989 people die from heroin and 12,979 die from gun homicides.
The 21st Century Cures Act passed on Wednesday will allocate $1 billion to fight the opioid epidemic through addiction treatment and prevention. Funding did not arrive a day too soon, as the rate of deaths from both heroin and other opioids, including synthetics such as fentanyl, have nearly quadrupled since 1999, according to the CDC.
While there are myriad reasons for the increase in deaths, some blame can be assigned to the recent introduction of fentanyl and other strong synthetic opioids to the marketplace. Deaths from these synthetic opioids grew 75 percent from 2014 to 2015.
In Ocean County, New Jersey, the rates of fentanyl deaths have exploded. In 2013, four people were killed by the drug. By 2014, that number rose to 19, but 51 people died from the drug in 2015, according to New Jersey's Office of the State Medical Examiner, the Daily Record reported.
While some may have hoped that the Cures Act will give those struggling with addiction the help they need, Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato is concerned that the problem will get worse before it gets better.
Coronato told the Daily Record, "as bad as it was in 2015, it's going to be horrendous in 2016," and forecasting that, "the numbers are just going to continue to spiral out of control."
is an option. Therefore using deductive mathematic logic everything else in it is an option. Since your teens , when you realize what this world is all about you can "quit". And nature always knows when to quit. However you never leave this world behind you before your time comes. Neither before nor after.
What I wrote may sound cold, especially to those with children, but half a century of personal experience just verifies what I wrote. I remember asking my late father what was the point of me and my brother being extremely stressed out at work ? He never answered my question, he went out to the balcony and looked into the void.
At least my mother admitted that bringing us into this world was a mistake.
(Hey, stop throwing rocks, broken bottles, Molotov cocktails and other trash at me). I just expressed
my personal opinion. You don't have to aspire by it.
But the thing is that the family in which I was a member of, was the prototype of a dysfunctional family. And so was my brother's who got a divorce after 12 years with a kid. The tragedy in all this is that after so many years, we remain a dysfunctional family.
There are 3 institutions that keep a society together : Family, education and work. Well, if you screw them up, there isn't much left, actually, there's nothing left.