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Opioid Overdoses Are Rising Faster Among Latinos Than Whites Or Blacks. Why? [khn.org]

 

The tall, gangly man twists a cone of paper in his hands as stories from nearly 30 years of addiction pour out: the robbery that landed him in prison at age 17; never getting his high school equivalency diploma; going through the horrors of detox, maybe 40 times, including this latest bout, which he finished two weeks ago. He’s now in a residential treatment unit for at least 30 days.

“I’m a serious addict,” said Julio Cesar Santiago, 44. “I still have dreams where I’m about to use drugs, and I have to wake up and get on my knees and pray, ‘Let God take this away from me,’ because I don’t want to go back. I know that if I go back out there, I’m done.”

Santiago has reason to worry. Data on opioid addiction in his home state of Massachusetts show the overdose death rate for Latinos there has doubled in three years, growing at twice the rates of non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks.

[For more on this story by Martha Bebinger, go to https://khn.org/news/opioid-ov...hites-or-blacks-why/]

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