Lea Michele, a star on the TV series “Glee,” was honored at the Teen Choice Awards Sunday, and in accepting the award for actress in a comedy, she dedicated it to her late boyfriend and former costar, Cory Monteith, the Los Angeles Times reports.
“I just wanted to be here today to personally thank all of you and tell everyone out there how much all of your love and support has meant to me over these very past difficult few weeks,” Ms Michele told the audience in her first public appearance since Mr Monteith, 31, died from an overdose of alcohol and heroin on July 13.
I’m a pretty decent fan of “Glee,” but what this speech did for me was to remind me of the growing problem we have in many of our communities from heroin abuse. It doesn’t just happen to TV heart-throbs.
Maryland Gov Martin O’Malley pledged just Friday to work with local and federal officials to combat heroin overdose deaths in Maryland. The number of deaths from heroin overdose jumped to the highest level last year since 2007, the Washington Post reports.
Gov O’Malley at a drug overdose roundtable in Cecil Co., Aug. 9 (Tom Nappi via MDGovpics/Flickr)
According to preliminary data released by the state, the number of homicides in Maryland dropped by about 31 percent between 2006 and 2012, from 547 to 377, but the number of deaths from heroin overdoses has increased. It was 378 in 2012, just one more than the total number of homicides.
“We’re losing more Marylanders to heroin alone now than we lose to homicides,” the Post quoted Gov O’Malley as saying. “That’s a pretty stunning figure.”
The spike in heroin abuse in the US—deaths linked to overdoses of heroin increased by 55 percent from 2000 to 2010, and the number of people who said they used heroin in the past year increased by 66 percent from 2007 to 2011 alone—has been attributed to crackdowns on strong painkillers, like Oxycontin, and action by pharmaceutical companies that makes Oxycontin harder to crush and snort.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does acknowledge that prescription drugs are the most common drug in overdose deaths: 60 percent of drug overdose deaths in 2010 involved pharmaceuticals, and about 82 percent of people who abuse drugs and receive treatment are over 21. But over all, deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the past two decades. Drug overdoses have become the leading cause of injury death in the United States, the CDC reports.
I bring this story to your attention, not because it involves kids or our schools, but because it involves our communities. See, lots of kids walk to school, and heroin or other drugs, which are often sold and abused right on routes to school, make those walks unsafe. School officials have to deal not only with safety in the school building, but also with safety of kids as they come to school and return home.
