I was listening to the Freakonomics Radio podcast backlog this week. The episode, Can $55 Billion End the Opioid Epidemic? was about the opioid crisis and how to deal with it with a frame on the payouts from legal wins. The interviewee, Stephen Loyd, was responding to a question Stephen Dubner asked about what if we just focused on prevention and not treatment. His response was, “… you’re really not going to be able to kill your way out of this …” Essentially, opioid use has such high impacts that it has social contagion impacts that grow faster than people are killed by its use. People get addicted faster that people leave addiction.

I’m reminded of all the people that have been dying on the Crackdown podcast.

If you’ve not heard it, Crackdown is a ground level opinion show about people in the drug crisis from the perspective of drug users. Listening to it puts a human spin on the reporting through other channels. I recommend giving it a go.

I hear about people dying of opioid overdose. About the toxic drug supply. About mental health crisis. I drive through Hastings and Main regularly on my way to and from work. I see the effects in Vancouver and Maple Ridge. I see the people hiding from the weather between cars in the Bay Parkade. I just couldn’t understand how this problem was self sustaining.

That one quote, “you’re really not going to be able to kill your way out of this.” summed everything up for me. We having been expecting the problem to go away, because eventually we had to run out of people who would become addicted to opioids. This one will not go away on its own. It’s been going for 25 years. Half my life. And it’s only getting worse.