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Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

I have a friend who lives in Columbus, going to Ohio State University. He regularly "regales" us of stories of the social and economic blight there. It's hard to imagine from the west coast.

Last week, he posted a picture of the Columbus Dispatch (the local newspaper), which featured a full-front-page ad for painkillers.

Seriously.

Of course, the newspaper isn't what it used to be, and has been recently sold due to lagging sales by the private family that owned it.

And when I shared this NPR article with this, he added "well maybe things got better, there are no longer overflow trailers in front of the City Morgue. But maybe they just moved them out back, I didn't search for them". And: https://coroner.franklincountyohio.gov/opiate-crisis-summit/...

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In South East Ohio, things are particularly bad, true. Somewhere like Columbus? Not as bad as you're portraying it to be. There are definitely problems, but "hard to imagine from the West Coast"? You mean, like, homeless people shooting up in downtown San Francisco hard to imagine? It's cool that your friend goes to Ohio State. It's a great school. I'm sure he's seeing a lot of economic and social blight as he looks around and sees brand new construction, half-million dollar houses, and one of the youngest, most educated groups of people in the country. But hey! Let's paint a stark picture of those poor people in flyover country. That'll give us something to talk about.

I went to Ohio State, and the above poster is presenting a point of view that only someone who has never lived there and probably never visited can hold. Nowadays you can walk from the OSU campus in Old North Columbus all the way down Short North into downtown Columbus on any night of the week and see nothing but restaurants, bars, clubs & so on.

Its a quite serious issue here in Dayton Ohio. The other day we had two parents overdose with a five and two year old next to them saved only because the five year old left and got help. It two three doses apiece to revive them. I write entire sections of the city out of my mind because heroin has proliferated so quickly. Ohio really needs a savior.

Ohio as a whole is a definite participation in the Opioid crisis, but to say Columbus is suffering from 'social and economic blight' is nonsense. The city is vibrant and growing, and is handily avoiding the mid-western living standard decay that's affecting the surrounding countryside.

It's an issue here on the outskirts of Cleveland as well. I wouldn't call it a blight per se, but I'm not sure why Ohio in particular is suffering this in greater amounts than other areas.

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