60 journalists all spend one week covering Cincinnati's battle with heroin

West Virgina is the most effected - http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/eric-eyre

These articles shouldn't make you sad but MAD.

"In six years, drug wholesalers showered the state with 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, while 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those two painkillers" That's 433 pills for every man, woman and child in the state.

When will the US (and the rest of the world) finally learn that locking users up just perpetuates the problem - you won't get a job with a criminal record, same for housing. All this arresting does is fill the coffers of (private) jails and creates needless suffering.

Also, why do people keep calling the cops on relatives and friends who OD? That just makes the problem worse. In fact, it should be made illegal to arrest anyone when emergency services are called to an OD, and this must be publically announced. People rather let other people die than save their lives because they're afraid of jail.

> She’s part of a protest against Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones, who won’t let his deputies carry Narcan. He's the only sheriff in southwest Ohio whose department doesn't use it. Two doses of Narcan cost about $75.

And, what kind of person is this moron? He should be in jail for willfully preventing deaths!

> “Either she got a new dealer, or her dealer hosed her,” a paramedic says.

Yet another case for why it 'd be really necessary that the state provides drugs like heroin, with proper quality control. So many deaths and near-deaths that could be avoided.

It's hard not to see the opioid crisis as anything but an "ensemble effort" of everything that's falling apart in America - punctuated by the refusal of pundits and politicians to acknowledge these problems or move towards solving them.

Edit: you could even say the willingness of drug companies to effectively transform themselves to dope dealers comes as a combination of for-profit medicine and regulatory capture, problems that have been festering for a while.

They probably call 911 in the US, and the dispatcher is deciding who to send. Is there something that suggests otherwise?

Separate from OD cases, though, friends and family DO often try to turn in loved ones. Addiction often turns your loved ones into genuine risks for other family members. And, sadly, jail is often the only existing place to send them if you can't have them in your house.