About the Contributor
Hannah Gampe, Editor in Chief
Hello! My name is Hannah and I’m (finally) a senior at TAHS. I hope to be writing the swim stories and other student and alumni spotlights. This is my...
National and Local Level
January 25, 2018
Opioids kill approximately 91 people per day in the US, 13 of them from Pennsylvania alone.
According to teens.drugabuse.gov, “Opioid drugs bind to opioid receptors on cells in the brain and throughout the body. Some of those cells control a person’s digestion, pain, and other functions; your body already contains opioid chemicals, such as endorphins, which relieve pain and make you feel good during exercise. When opioid drugs attach to these receptors, they dull a person’s perception of pain even more. That’s why they can be so useful for people recovering from serious injuries or surgery.”
Many opioids are prescription drugs, but heroin is also an opioid.
Because heroin is either injected or directly snorted, it goes straight into the body and brain. Heroin isn’t good for pain relief, but it’s very easy to get addicted to because it gives an extreme high that doesn’t last long.
On January 10th, 2018, Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Tom Wolf declared the state’s opioid situation a public health emergency disaster. He ordered a command center to be set up, similar to what would be done in the event of a natural disaster. Wolf signed an order for a 90 day disaster declaration. As noted by the Altoona Mirror, the declaration is to widen “access to the state’s prescription drug monitoring program and [make] it easier for medical professionals to get people into drug treatment more quickly.”
The state has lost more than 4,600 people in 2016 due to overdoses. Pennsylvania has more than twice the national average rate of drug overdoses.
In 2017, six states, including Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia, already declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency.
In 2015, 20.8 million people age 12 and older had a substance use disorder (SUD) related to their use of alcohol or illicit drugs within the previous year.
In Blair County, approximately 10,500 people have a substance abuse problem. However, the number of people who actually seek treatment is only 2,400.
The problem spans many generations in central Pennsylvania. Surprisingly, 23% of Blair County overdoses occurred among residents 50 years of age and over, while another 23% occur in the under 20 age group.