“It’s other people’s problem” is what I hear from many Americans when they consider the more than 100,000 drug deaths a year in this country.
When they see the scenes in Kensington, Philadelphia, that I described last week, it seems easy for some to pass it off as other people’s problem.
“Who doesn’t know that heroin is dangerous?” they think. “Of course your life is going to fall apart if you start taking tranq.”
Perhaps we should be thinking something different.
If this country is going to get serious about its epidemic of lost lives, perhaps we should think, “OK, maybe it won’t be you. But it could be someone you love. It could easily be someone you know.”
Many readers have told me in messages over the last couple of weeks how closely the drug catastrophe has affected them. You don’t think it’s going to get close to you until it does.
That was certainly the case with Julia Ghahramani.
The 26-year-old first-year lawyer was one of three young New York professionals who were killed in one night — March 18, 2021 — by fentanyl poisoning.
Cartels using drones to drop fentanyl over the border