The Widely Accepted Worldwide Drug Pandemic

In 1999, a roughly 10,000 people died to drug overdoses in the US. In 2015, this number was up to ~35,000. In 2021, this number further rose to a horrifying ~107,000 people. In 2022, a new record was set, one that no one wanted to set, as drug overdoses claimed the lives of 110,000 different people. 110,000 families, 110,000 people’s friends, 110,000 individuals who all lived their own lives who all once roamed the streets of the country were taken by the morgues, cemeteries, and crematoria, all by the excessive usage of drugs.

It is not a problem that is underreported. The concern surrounding drug usage has long been noted, dating all the way back to the previous century. Despite that, nothing seems to have changed for the better; laws have been implemented to try regulate this pandemic and yet, deaths and addictions increase yearly, the trafficking and distribution of drugs worsen daily, and nothing is being done to challenge this seemingly unstoppable growth of a killer that has had society at a chokehold for millennia. Modern-day society continues to take the subject lighter than ever, peer pressure continues to influence millions of teenagers around the world into building drug addictions and thousands go broke daily pursuing their own causes of death, all while the same people are well aware of the risks that drugs pose to lives. Undoubtedly, this raises the question: Why? Why do drugs kill as much as they do? Why do so many people knowingly turn to drugs, in spite of the risks? Why are they as accessible to the general public as they are, if they are meant to have been declared illegal?

Unfortunately, the answers to the above questions are not simple. Every single person in society as a whole holds some amount of accountability in answering these questions, everyone from over-pressuring and over-protective parents to friends who are bad influences and those that spread the culture surrounding drugs that makes it seem “trendy” and “cool” to abuse drugs, and as long as everyone maintains the lazy, lacklustre attitudes that they do to the entire issue of drugs, new records for deaths will continue to be set every year millions more friends and families will flock to morgues to mourn the losses of their loved ones.

By Rian Devaiah