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Opioid addiction has devastated huge swaths of the United States in the last two decades. Overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1999, with about 70% of those overdoses attributed to opioids.

Put more directly, almost 500,000 Americans died because of opioid drugs — street drugs and prescribed alike — from 1999 to 2019. That’s almost as many victims as the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

Half a million people.

Researchers link the roots of the epidemic to the increased prescribing of pharmaceutical opioids in the 1990s. Billed as safe, new formulations for treatment of a wide range of pain, deaths from the drugs soon began to mount as they were misused and overused, sometimes unintentionally.

Around 2010, overdoses from heroin took over as the epicenter of the crisis. Some who became addicted to prescription opioids made the switch to street drugs as legal prescriptions were becoming more tightly monitored. Then, three years later, synthetic opioids including fentanyl rose to tragic prominence.

All the while, stigma contributed to the opioid-caused deaths. People who abuse drugs are commonly judged, pitied, criminalized and ostracized, so their deaths are also easily seen as foregone conclusions for flawed lives. The victim’s deaths may be mourned without details, their loved ones who speak out about what took their father or sister or son are called brave.

In one day this week in St. Cloud, eight overdoses and one death were attributed to opioids by police.

Clearly, what we are doing collectively isn’t working. If it was, almost 50,000 opioid-related U.S. deaths in 2019 wouldn’t have happened — a figure more than six times higher than 1999.

There are tools available to everyone who wants to help. Most simple is to properly secure prescribed opioids and properly dispose of unused opioid medications. Many area law enforcement agencies have drop boxes for just that purpose.

Less well-known, more controversial and more of a commitment: Many Minnesotans can legally obtain opioid antagonists — medications that block the effects of an overdose — to have on hand in case of emergency.

A Minnesota law that took effect Jan. 1, 2017, allows doctors to prescribe naloxone to people who believe they might need it for themselves or others. Pharmacists, too, have a state-sanctioned protocol that allows them to distribute opioid antagonists and counsel people on how to use them.

Additionally, the law protects “good Samaritans” who administer an opioid antagonist and calls 911 from repercussions, even if they are also using drugs at the time. It is legal to possess and carry naloxone in Minnesota.

Normalizing the availability and use of opioid antagonist medications will save lives. Those lives then have a chance to become drug-free. And even if those saved by naloxone don’t end their drug use, their lives are not worthless. It shouldn’t need to be said, but there it is.

If you would like to find out more about how naloxone laws work in Minnesota and where to get it, the Minnesota Department of Health is a good place to start. https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/opioids/basics/naloxone.html

We can judge or we can help. Your call.

— St. Cloud Times, Feb. 26