#opioid-crisis

#opioid-crisis

Few do so as deftly as Beth Macy's new book, " Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America." Throughout her career as a journalist, Macy has covered rural poverty and corporate greed. Her 2014 book, " Factory Man," followed a Virginia furniture-maker's fight against Chinese offshoring; in 2018, she published " Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America," an investigation of the opioid crisis that was subsequently adapted into a Hulu series.

But through Facebook groups and GoFundMe pages, I began to connect with families going through similar ordeals. Despite the pain and relentless demands of their situations, many were open and generous with their time. That was especially true of Jessica Pittizola Jarrett and her son, John-Bryan, who goes by JB and suffered an anoxic brain injury and other complications after overdosing on fentanyl in September 2020.

The area near McCarthy Square, a small patch of green space at the corner of 7th Avenue and Charles Street in the West Village, has become an epicenter of drug abuse for down-on-the-luck individuals openly injecting themselves with opioids, and local residents say few people are doing anything to stop it. McCarthy Square has seen a surge of individuals spread out on the sidewalk, some with needles jutting out of their arms.

"A lot of our research, including that for this grant, is looking at why so few people are getting evidence-based treatments for substance use disorder," said Huskamp, Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. "Medications for opioid use disorder are highly efficacious. They reduce opioid use; they reduce overdose risk and other negative outcomes. These medications save lives."

Reducing the funding for naloxone and overdose prevention sends the message that we would rather people who use drugs die than get the support they need and deserve, said Dr. Melody Glenn.