David McWilliams: Apocalyptic scenes could await us if opioid pandemic hits amid housing crisis

In 1995, Purdue Pharma obtained FDA approval for OxyContin and from 1997 to 2002 OxyContin prescriptions increased in the US from 670,000 to 6.2 million a year. Photograph: George Frey/Reuters

Canada, the liberal country of Margaret Atwood, with one of the world’s most enviable welfare and health systems, is blessed with enormous mineral wealth, making it a destination for thousands of young Irish migrants. Side by side with prosperity, parts of Canada’s cities are poisoned by synthetic opioids – fentanyl and oxycodone – that are decimating large parts of North America. Hundreds of destitute men sleepwalk around the streets, devastated by addiction.

By 2016, synthetic opioids surpassed both heroin and prescription painkillers as the leading cause of opioid-related overdoses . From 2015 to 2020, the rate of opioid-involved overdose deaths again doubled The third wave kicked off around 2013 with a significant increase in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, particularly those involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl. By 2016, synthetic opioids surpassed both heroin and prescription painkillers as the leading cause of opioid-related overdoses. From 2015 to 2020, the rate of opioid-involved overdose deaths again doubled, from 10.4 to 21.4 per 100,000. This is what we are witnessing on the streets of urban North America.

As last week’s column argued, these middle-class and upper-middle-class people are now buying the homes that were once built for poorer people. The poorer people who used to live in these homes are being shunted into the rental market, where they compete for scarce accommodation. The people who used to live in the lower end of the rental market are being elbowed out and, as prices rise, finding themselves homeless.

Ireland’s cities have a similar problem with heroin. If these opioids – 50 to 70 times stronger than morphine – flood into Ireland in the same volumes as North America, God help us.US, UK and Germany have sown the shame of their nations in Gaza’s blood-drenched soilAlmost 28 years on, Michelle Smith de Bruin’s Olympic splash continues to make waves

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