100k died of drug overdoses during first year of Covid Restrictions

The uptick in overdose deaths followed the nationwide crackdown on pain meds - which itself was justified by pointing to a pill mill problem that had largely been solved for a decade.

Missing from this story are the vastly larger numbers of people who remain in debilitating, chronic pain (and the accompanying suicides) - which I guess isn't as sexy as overdoses.

ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=number+of+chronic+pain+patients+de...

The end of the article reminds me of one of the worst absurdities of American drug laws. In many cases, owning a scale or other measuring equipment gets you in more trouble. Potential evidence of trafficking. Never mind that a scale is the only way to dose powdered substances as a consumer of street drugs. It's not really possible to safely dose street drugs to begin with. It's certainly not possible if you're measuring out quantities by eye. Simply ensuring addicts have $10 digital scales would probably save a few lives.