Tag: Drug Overdoses

Commentary: The Intellectual Foundations of MAGA

Virginia Star Staff
MAGA Hat

Republicans are dumb. They are easily led suckers, voting against their own best interests, manipulated by dangerous demagogues. This accusation is accepted as fact by most Democrat voters and is relentlessly reinforced by the media Democrats rely on. From MSNBC, Democratic strategist James Carville says Republicans “have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries.”  From New York Magazine, “Is DeSantis Just Not Dumb Enough for Republicans?” From Vanity Fair, “Is the Sheer Stupidity of Republican Politics Breaking Through?”

Even some conservative columnists can’t criticize the Democrats without taking a shot at those stupid Republicans. Daniel Henninger, writing for the Wall Street Journal, characterized national politics this year as “The Stupid Party vs. the Evil Party.” As for the leader of the Republican Party, we have this from The New Republic, “Trump Is an Extremely Dumb Fascist.” And as James Carville said, “When stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.”

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Commentary: America’s ‘Social Justice’ Nightmares Have Only Intensified

Virginia Star Staff
Pills

Seattle is in King County, Washington, where Joe Biden got 75 percent of the vote in the 2020 election. King County had more than 1,000 drug overdoses involving fentanyl in 2023. These two facts are almost certainly related, but which is the cause and which the effect? Or could it be that both (a) the tendency to vote for Democrats and (b) the addiction to dangerous drugs are caused by some unknown factor? Without a careful analysis of the available data to identify that unknown background factor, is it wrong to hazard a guess that the overdosing dopeheads and Democratic voters in King County are just plain stupid?

Beyond sarcastic put-downs, it behooves those interested in public policy to take a look at what’s going on in places like Seattle, where Democrats dominate and “progressive” ideas therefore advance unhindered by any effective opposition. In the case of King County’s skyrocketing drug overdoses — which increased nearly 50 percent in just the past year — local officials have declared the problem “a public health crisis.” However, fentanyl is illegal, which means that the overdoses are also indicative of a crime problem, and progressives are against putting criminals in prison.

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Commentary: President Trump’s Plan to Save America’s Cities

RealClearWire
Trump NYC

With all the devastating news about urban crime, drug overdoses, illegal immigration, rampant homelessness, out-of-control budgets, and educational failures, it is encouraging that President Donald Trump has committed his next administration to a saving America’s cities.

As Just the News reported, “With the nation’s first primary state as a backdrop, former President Donald Trump took aim Saturday at Democrats’ urban strongholds, vowing to both secure and revitalize blue cities weary from years of violence and economic decay.”

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Opioid Epidemic in 2020 Cost Virginia Nearly $3.5 Billion

Admin

The opioid epidemic in Virginia cost almost $3.5 billion in 2020, according to a new cost calculator from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and the Virginia Commonwealth University. On average, over four Virginians died of an opioid overdose each day in 2020, according to a VDH announcement of the cost calculator.

“This burden is carried by Virginia’s workers, employers, and governments, and includes both future losses and current direct spending that could have been avoided,” the calculator’s site explains. “Virginia families and businesses take on a large amount of these costs, mostly due to lost future worker productivity. Federal, state, and local governments also see increased healthcare and government costs and lost future tax revenues. The cost burden of the opioid epidemic is split among several sectors.”

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Attorney General Schmidt: Kansas Sees Large Spikes in Fentanyl Seizures, Drug Overdoses

The Center Square

Record amounts of fentanyl and other drugs are being seized in Kansas after they’ve made their way north from Mexico and the state’s attorney general, Derek Schmidt, said he is trying to stop it. He joined a coalition of other Republican attorneys general at the Texas-Mexico border to see first-hand how the Biden administration’s open border policies are contributing to crime in Kansas.

In one briefing with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the AGs learned that Texas state troopers alone had seized enough fentanyl last year to kill over 200 million people. They also arrested more than 10,000 illegal immigrants for committing state crimes, including for child trafficking and drug smuggling, seized over five tons of methamphetamine, and over $17 million in cash as part of Operation Lone Star, Texas’ border security initiative.

While it’s “good news that they’re seizing more, there’s no reason to think that there’s less of it eluding seizure at the border because the border’s wide open in large swaths,” Schmidt told The Center Square. “I don’t think it’s a good news number. I think it’s an indication of the increased volume coming across the border, not an indication of increased success in stopping it at the border.”

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U.S. Life Expectancy Drops to Lowest Level Since Second World War

Admin

The U.S. life expectancy dropped to its lowest level since World War II in 2020, multiple sources reported.

Life expectancy fell from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77 years in 2020, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, NBC News reported.

The average life expectancy for males fell 2.1 years from 76.3 in 2019 to 74.2 in 2020, NBC News reported. Women’s average life expectancy decreased 1.5 years from 81.4 in 2019 to 79.9 in 2020.

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Addiction-Based Mental Health Crisis Still Getting Worse in Virginia

Eric Burk

During the beginning of COVID-19, hospital inpatient volume and emergency department visits decreased, in part due to people postponing treatment. But the same data showed an increase in the number of patients getting treatment for alcohol, drug use, and related mental disorders, the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) reported in April. In a Friday press conference, VHHA Vice President of Data and Analytics David Vaamonde reported that increased treatment for those kinds of disorders continued into the first two quarters of 2021 — one of only two Major Diagnostic Categories (MDCs) that saw growth since the beginning of the pandemic.

“We’re looking at MDCs where volumes actually increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have alcohol and drug use, and drug induced organic mental health disorders, obviously a very concerning trend there, and then diseases and disorders of the respiratory system and infectious and parasitic diseases,” Vaamonde said, adding that the respiratory, infectious, and parasitic categories line up with what a COVID-19 patient would have.

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Fatal Overdoses and Emergency Calls Rise in Virginia, Highlighting Impact of COVID-19 on Substance Abuse

Jacob Taylor

Fatal drug overdoses and non-alcohol overdose calls have increased in Virginia since the beginning of the COVID-19 shutdown, highlighting a troubling trend and fallout from the deadly virus.

“[COVID-19] has undoubtedly increased the overdoses as well as overdose death as well as relapse for those who were in recovery from addictions,” John Shinholser, president and co-founder of the McShin Foundation, said in an interview with The Virgina Star. 

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