An article in the Washington Post looks and the lives—and deaths—of two victims of the addiction and overdose epidemic, a drug dealer and the woman to whom he allegedly sold illicit drugs. The story highlights our tragic national drug crisis and how it impacts individuals and families, who are left to ponder how two lives might have been different. The victim was a 26-year-old woman who used illicit painkillers to ease her chronic anxiety and had struggled for years to break her addiction. The dealer ran a veritable pill factory from where he lived in his parents’ basement, making counterfeit oxycodone pills using a synthetic opioid similar to fentanyl that is 100-fold more potent than morphine. An autopsy found evidence of the chemical in the victim’s body. The dealer, who was later arrested following the suspicious death of another user, died in jail; the medical examiner has yet to rule on the cause of his death. With more than 107,000 overdose fatalities over the past year, the country is experiencing a public health crisis of unprecedented proportions, fueled by fentanyl-like synthetics that are sold as real prescription medications but are tainted and therefore deadly, and consumed unbeknownst to the user.
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Rosenthal Center for AddictIon Studies