A 10-year-olds overdose death reveals Miami neighborhoods intense struggle with opioids

[IronLionZion]

When 10-year-old Alton Banks left the community swimming pool on the last day of his life, he walked past the elementary school where he had just finished fifth grade.

He passed a cheery banner that defined a beaten-down inner-city neighborhood trying to will itself into up-and-comingness: “Experience Overtown. Eat, Live, Work, Play.”

He walked past a fancy new apartment building under construction, then a long row of ragged homes and chickens clucking freely on sidewalks littered with crushed tall-boy beer cans in brown paper bags.

He arrived home on that hot afternoon, June 23, and climbed the concrete steps to his second-floor apartment across from the homeless people crowded under a highway overpass.

He started vomiting. His mother called an ambulance. And that evening he was dead, killed by a combination of heroin and fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.

And no one yet has the slightest clue how the opioid crisis that has battered the nation with such ferocity ended up taking a happy, skinny little boy a month shy of his 11th birthday.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-10-year-olds-overdose-death-reveals-miami-neighborhoods-intense-struggle-with-opioids/2017/07/20/0618e49a-6cee-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_miami-opioid-1045pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f0f00870731d

This is messed up. What's the solution?

[genxlib]

1. That one hits close to home

That pool is one of my projects. I designed it a few years back along with a community center, football field and the turquoise gymnasium in the background.

When I saw the picture, it smacked me in the gut.

Sad story. That neighborhood is really hurting. It was an intimidating place to work.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. Increased focus on harm reduction. Increased economic opportunity. More affordable and accessible

health care, including mental health and chemical dependency. End the drug war and take the emphasis off punishment and put it into treatment. Education about what addiction is. A change in how we view another person's worth. Better sick/injury leave policies.