In the past four years, Washington, D.C., has undergone its worst public-health crisis since the arrival of AIDS: an explosion of fatal drug overdoses among African Americans, the Washington Post reports. The rate of death, caused by heroin cut with the lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl, is comparable to the opioid epidemic’s worst ravages in rural and suburban parts of the U.S. More people died of opioid overdoses than homicides last year in Washington. D.C.’s overdose victims are different from those in areas of the U.S. commonly associated with opioid abuse. Many are black men who have been addicted to heroin for decades. Unlike drug users elsewhere, they have often been left by their government without basic help.
D.C. has the highest increase in overdose deaths among urban areas. The city has consistently fallen short in its response to mounting opioid casualties, misspending millions of federal grant dollars and ignoring lifesaving strategies widely adopted elsewhere. Officials distributed naloxone — an overdose antidote that laypeople can use to prevent deaths — at a far lower rate than other cities with comparable opioid problems. Officials at the nonprofit groups that collaborated with the District on its naloxone campaign called it “woefully inadequate” and “disastrous.” The city faltered in carrying out a federal initiative to connect long-term heroin users with treatment. Although D.C. officials in 2017 began receiving $4 million from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), many programs the city said it would launch never materialized. The clinic contracted with most of its federal funds said not a single patient has been referred to them for treatment. “It’s just pure incompetence,” said Larry Gourdine of Medical Home Development Group, which received nearly $1.5 million in grants. “This is not that difficult. I mean, this is straight-up health-care delivery.”