It's your mom, who started using painkillers after knee surgery and now can't do a day without them. It's your friend's boyfriend, the one who lost his license after the third DUI. It's your little cousin, who used to spend the night when his parents were fighting and now is in and out of jail. If you live in Humboldt County, odds are you know someone struggling with addiction. And the odds are also strong that they will die from their addiction. Over the past three years, more people have died from drug-and alcohol related deaths than all other causes of accidental death (drowning, falling, fires) combined.
"It's across the board," says Chief Deputy Coroner Ernie Stewart. "It doesn't matter which race, religion, way of life. Humboldt County is being overrun with illicit drugs, and it's getting worse in all facets."
Stewart's report on accidental deaths is grim, laced with vignettes of lives cut short. February 2013: A 23-year-old man, highly intoxicated, aspirates on his own vomit. April 2014: A woman, 25, dies of combined ketamine and alcohol toxicity. March 2015: A man, 59, overdoses on methamphetamine. According to the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services, rates of drug-related deaths between 2008 and 2012 were three times higher in Humboldt than the California state average. Out of California's 58 counties, we come in a dismal second for drug-related deaths, beating out only Lake County. Of those deaths, the majority (53 percent) are due to unintentional overdoses or chronic drug use.
[For more of this story, written by Linda Stansberry, go to http://www.northcoastjournal.c.../Content?oid=3265840]
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