Financial Times: “Tens of thousands of American parents are mourning the deaths of their children amid an unprecedented drugs crisis, which has claimed 107,000 lives in the year to August 2022. About two-thirds of those deaths were caused by fentanyl — a drug prescribed to treat severe cancer pain — which is increasingly being cut into illegal street drugs via a well-honed supply chain built by Chinese and Mexican crime syndicates.”
“The consequences are sobering. Illicit fentanyl has displaced legally prescribed painkillers as the main cause of overdoses in the US. The skyrocketing death rate — equivalent to one American overdosing every five minutes — and the $1.5 trillion annual cost to the economy is forcing a national debate about how to solve a public health emergency that, alongside Covid-19, has helped drive US life expectancy down to a 25-year low of 76.4 years.”
Be sure to read Chris Riback’s Deep Dive on the fentanyl crisis.
