New data shows lockdowns coincided with record-breaking drug overdoses

FEE’s Brad Polumbo writes, “The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic will go down in American history as one of loss, economic suffering, and social strife. Not only did hundreds of thousands of citizens die of COVID-19, but the sweeping mandates and restrictions governments implemented in the name of slowing the spread had lethal consequences in their own right—the full scope of which won’t be known for decades. Yet new data confirm that fatal drug overdoses hit new highs between March 2020 and 2021, further illuminating the fallout of life under lockdown.

The sad yet inescapable conclusion is that in their efforts to halt one public health crisis, the authorities fueled another. https://t.co/eoGHFgZHyT

— FEE (@feeonline) October 14, 2021

An astounding 96,000 Americans died from drug overdoses over that one-year period, the latest figures released by the Centers for Disease Control reveal. That’s a 29.6 percent increase from the previous year…

The sad yet inescapable conclusion is that in their efforts to halt one public health crisis, the authorities fueled another. And drug overdoses are, unfortunately, not an outlier or exception. We can observe similar trends in domestic violence, mental health issues, and many other areas where the consequences of unprecedented interventions proved life-threatening in their own right.”

Read the entire column.