My Sister Died of an Overdose. Defunding Police Might Have Saved Her

FAMILY MEMBERS DIE TOO –

June 28, 2021 – Fatal overdoses like Keeley’s have increased steeply in recent years. During the year ending in November 2020, approximately 92,000 people died of a drug overdose in the U.S. — a stark increase over 2019, when approximately 70,630 people died of overdoses. There was a particularly unprecedented rise in overdoses once the pandemic hit. Some of the most impacted groups have been Black and Indigenous communities. While federal data are flawed in terms of delineating which drugs and drug combinations were involved in overdoses, the increase in deaths is clearly significant.

Republicans have wrongly pointed to the overdose crisis as a rationale for high levels of policing. And unfortunately, many of President Joe Biden’s answers to the overdose increase — such as expanding criminalization-based drug courts, increasing court-mandated drug treatment, training police to administer overdose antidotes and emphasizing fentanyl criminalization — are also grounded in law enforcement.