The post Detroit Has More Opioid Overdose Deaths Than Murders appeared first on High Times.
The poster child for urban decay (the phenomenon resulting when businesses abandon a city en masse), in the past decade, Detroit has served as a handy punchline for elitist snobs interested in “ruin porn” and kneejerk reactionaries looking for an example of the havoc “Democrats” and “the unions” wreak upon the public. But neither Democrats nor unions are responsible for this horrifying and sobering fact. Detroit has more opioid overdose deaths than murders.
Death in Detroit
In the Trump era, Detroit usually follows Chicago and Baltimore when law-and-order types search for an example of how violent criminals have seized control of streets and terrorized the public, thus necessitating some expansion of police powers to “liberate our communities.”
These are all simple ways of looking at a city from afar—which goes towards understanding why they are all wrong. But new data shows that Detroit is absolutely an example of how the country’s opiate crisis is spiraling out of control—and becoming more deadly than every career criminal combined.
In Detroit in 2017, 267 people died as a result of homicide—and 383 people died as a result of an opiate overdose, according to WXYZ.
Those numbers are sobering and staggering. They surprise even hardened DEA agents like Timothy Plancon, the agent-in-charge in Detroit. They also demonstrate beyond a doubt what we already knew: America is awash in opiates, overdoses are out of control, and pose a far greater threat than the “cartels” or “violent criminals” Attorney General Jeff Sessions is prone to droning on about.
The Opioid Crisis
Unfortunately, since Detroit has more opioid overdose deaths than murders, the city is demonstrating