“The unemployment issue, through COVID, is that people are at loose ends, they’re depressed and upset, and they’re getting into substances more,” said Barbara Schindler, a physician and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Drexel’s College of Medicine. (Nationwide, the unemployment rate among Black Americans was second only to Hispanic Americans at the height of the pandemic, and remains the highest in the country, three percentage points higher than the national average.) But in the second quarter of 2020 - as lockdowns began and millions around the country suddenly were out of work - the rate among Black overdose victims jumped to 48%, and stayed high for the rest of the year. Throughout 2019 and into the early months of 2020, the unemployment rate among Black overdose victims hovered around 30%. Johnson also noted that pandemic-related unemployment among Black Philadelphians may be linked to the high overdose death toll in 2020. I think that’s the main difference in terms of fatalities from 2019 to fatalities for 2020.” “People live alone and they’re not being checked on by family or friends, and the odds of fatally overdosing does increase. “We know for a fact that a lot of our fatal overdoses happened in the home,” Johnson said.

The lockdown only made that trend worse, city officials believe.

The social distancing and lockdown policies imposed to control the COVID-19 pandemic likely influenced the rise in overdose deaths in 2020, said Jewell Johnson, a city substance use epidemiologist.įor years, the majority of the city’s fatal overdoses have taken place in private homes. But toxicology reports cannot determine whether overdose victims are using stimulants and opioids together intentionally, whether dealers are knowingly selling stimulants cut with opioids or whether stimulants are being contaminated with fentanyl during the drug packaging process. Fentanyl was present in 94% of all opioid-related deaths and in 77% of stimulant-related deaths.ĭeaths involving both stimulants and opioids, which have the opposite effect, have been on the rise for several years. The powerful synthetic opioid began making its way into the city’s heroin supply in the mid-2010s and was present in 84% of the city’s drug deaths last year.ĭeaths involving heroin and cocaine decreased, while deaths involving fentanyl and pharmaceutical opioids increased. Philadelphia’s death toll is in line with trends across the country showing that more Black and Hispanic people are dying of overdoses, she said.įentanyl remained the major drug killer in Philadelphia. It is because the structures in place make it less safe to be Black people in this country.” “It’s not because we are Black that we are experiencing COVID-19 more deeply, experiencing the overdose crisis more deeply. “The overdose crisis, as is the drug war, is a racial justice issue as well as a health justice issue,” she said. The national organization advocates for reducing criminalization in drug policy and expanding harm-reduction measures. Black drug policy and harm reduction advocates have been ringing the alarm on the overdose crisis,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. And, sadly and infuriatingly, it was very preventable. The death rate among Hispanic Philadelphians remained about the same from 2019 to 2020, though it had increased in prior years. But fatal overdoses soared by 29% among Black Philadelphians, even as they decreased by 10% among white Philadelphians. Overall, overdose deaths increased by 9% from the year before. Just as they were by the coronavirus deaths, Black Philadelphians were hit hardest by overdose deaths, an alarming demographic shift in drug fatalities that began before the pandemic and worsened in 2020. Overdoses killed 1,214 Philadelphians in 2020, marking the city’s second-highest drug death toll on record, and one likely worsened by COVID-19 lockdowns, city officials said.

How does coc count war dmg percentage