Bad Mix

Someone got the recipe wrong....again:

• Chicago emergency crews responded to 35 suspected opioid overdose cases Tuesday, nearly twice the city’s daily average of 19, prompting the Chicago Department of Public Health to issue a warning about a possible spike in overdoses. The 35 suspected opioid-related EMS responses were concentrated in South Shore and Chatham, CDPH said.

  The spike does not mean 35 people died or that all 35 cases have been confirmed as opioid overdoses, but the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program, a real-time surveillance system used to identify possible overdose clusters, identified the cluster.

  CDPH urged people to carry naloxone, commonly known as NARCAN, the medication that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose. Officials also delivered a blunt warning about ingesting counterfeit or other pills not prescribed by a doctor and dispensed by a pharmacy.

  The department did not identify a specific drug or source as the cause of Tuesday’s increase. However, fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin, has become a leading driver of overdose deaths in the United States. While it was once most commonly found mixed into heroin, it is now frequently detected in cocaine, counterfeit prescription pills, methamphetamine, and other illicit drugs, often without users’ knowledge.

As we've stated in the past, we had some bad family experiences with narcotics, so NARCAN was always a hard "no" from us. Our relatives would have been far better off if that problem child had died of an overdose rather than stealing and burglarizing family homes to support his bad habits.

Society would be far better off if junkies overdosed and got trundled off to landfills by Streets and San rather than spending ambulance rides, medical care and doctors' efforts on what will be a vicious endless cycle of wasted time, resources and lives.