As drug overdose deaths surge across the country, the AP looks at Native American communities that have been especially hard hit, and now report the highest levels of fatalities. Like elsewhere across the country, the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is fueling the rise in deaths, but in Indian tribes, people are also dying from a deadly cocktail of drugs including methamphetamines, with Native Americans 12 times more likely to die from it. For these communities, which have been neglected for years, lack access to good health care, and suffer from high unemployment rates and poverty, overdoses are considered deaths of despair. The national average for health care spending is just over $11,000 per person, but tribal health systems receive only about a third of that and urban Indian groups even less.
Meanwhile, initial data from the nation’s first supervised Injection sites—also known as overdose prevention centers—in New York City show that 2,000 substance users visited the facilities in the first three weeks of operation and that 59 lives had been saved from an overdose. The statement from the New York health department did not say how many individuals had been referred to and entered treatment. Supervised sites and other harm reduction programs are critical to saving lives, but are most effective if they facilitate treatment.
And finally, as the end-of-year deadline nears for municipalities across New York State to opt-out of allowing cannabis businesses within their borders, more and more localities are saying no to marijuana dispensaries and on-site consumption lounges. So far, 10 percent of cities, 28 percent of towns, and 19 percent of villages have notified the Office of Cannabis Management that they added one or both of the restrictions. Dozens more have passed their own rules, such as prohibiting pot storefronts. In some communities, clusters of local governments are barring cannabis businesses, including a large swath of Orange County just north of New York City. If New York follows other legal pot states, a majority of localities will say no; in neighboring New Jersey, which also legalized pot last year, 70 percent have opted out.