“Once you’re into heroin, it’s almost like a relationship with a person you love. And letting go of that – the thought of never seeing someone I love again – I couldn’t imagine giving it up forever.” – A homeless user in San Francisco (Time Special Report: “The Opioid Diaries”).
Attempting to make sense of the worst crises and catastrophes to plague mankind, analysts often describe how “a perfect storm” of events and conditions have worked together to bring about some great evil.
The ship was traveling too fast. The steersman made a wrong turn. An uncontained coal-bunker fire raged below deck. The hull’s iron rivets were too weak. The weather was conducive to drawing icebergs into the ship’s path. Though specific iceberg warnings were received over the wireless, the Titanic’s captain wasn’t told because the message didn’t carry the required prefix. And binoculars that would have enabled lookouts to see the iceberg for themselves were locked up on-board ship – the key held by an officer cut from the crew just before departure. A perfect storm.
Today, like the Titanic disaster, America’s ever-growing opioid epidemic is the result of another perfect storm of cascading events and conditions. But instead of 1,500 dead, the opioid crisis has taken the lives of more than 500,000 Americans since 2000 – and some experts believe another 500,000 may die in the next decade if current trends persist. In 2016 and 2017, more Americans lost their lives each year to drug overdoses than died during the entire Vietnam War, driving Americans’ life expectancy as a whole downward.”
Read more at: http://www.wnd.com/2018/07/projected-500000-american-deaths-in-decade-from/
Source: WND.com – July 8, 2018
