Baltimore's health commissioner is revamping the way we think about drug addiction—and so much more (City Paper)
It is a cold, wet, dreary Saturday morning on the first day of October. It's the kind of morning most people would rather spend stretched out in bed, or maybe sipping a cup of coffee and daydreaming about nothing much in particular. But at 9 a.m., inside the Baltimore War Memorial, Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen is addressing a crowd of about 50 people at something called "Solutions Summit: Behavioral Health Forum." Organized by the nonprofit Open Society Institute, the event is a way for citizens to come together and work toward solutions to the city's lingering structural problems.
This morning, she's talking about addiction deaths, and how they have increased in part due to fentanyl, an opioid that can be added to any number of drugs. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin.
Wen speaks with passion and authority, and the room is silent as she makes her case about the urgency of this situation.
"The number of people dying…has increased by tenfold—not 10 percent—10 times in the last two years because this medication fentanyl has gotten mixed with heroin, with cocaine, and people don't know that it's there," Wen says. "There is so much work ahead of us but now we have to focus on saving lives."