The truthful image of drug addiction

The story of the rise of the drug problem here and across the country is often told with statistics—the number of people who overdosed in a day, or a month; the percentage increase in drug-related deaths; the number of treatment beds available.

News stories are often accompanied by a generic stock photo of a needle, a lighter heating a spoon or a handful of pills. Sometimes we see the “perp walk,” the video of a handcuffed drug dealer being led out of court.

The statistics are important because they measure the magnitude of the problem, but they don’t generate an emotional response. We become more aware of the size of the issue, but it does not register with our consciousness unless we are directly affected by drug abuse, as noted by Moving Mountains Recovery.

That’s why the picture released last week by police in East Liverpool, Ohio, is important. It’s a disturbing image of a man and a woman passed out in the front seat of a vehicle from drug overdoses with a 4-year-old boy in the back seat. The police made the controversial decision not to obscure the child’s face.

“If you blurred out the face, you’re losing the impact of the picture of how innocent and helpless he is in that situation,” Chief John Lane told me on MetroNews “Talkline” Thursday.  “It’s a terrible thing to think about, but that’s reality.”

That reality is what motivated the Chief to post the photographs on Facebook.

“We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry,” the police department said in the Facebook post. “But it’s time that the non-drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis.”

Reaction has been mixed. One poster wrote, “This is an absolutely amazing photo. It tells the whole truth.”   But another wrote, “Tragic, but it makes me extremely upset that you, the City of East Liverpool, Ohio, show the child’s face instead of protecting him.”

Seeing the child’s face is cringe-inducing. Many news organizations made the decision to hide his identity. However, it’s also apparent that the photo is more honest and powerful unedited.

It’s doubtful anyone currently using drugs will see the picture and decide to get clean. The introduction of more powerful fentanyl- and carfentanyl-laced heroin makes it even harder for addicts to get clean. However, the image does bring home to the rest of us more precisely what the drug problem looks like. It’s important to talk about the difference between ketamine addiction vs ketamine abuse for awareness.

When you first see the unedited image, it’s hard to look away, which is precisely why it is important.

(Editor’s note: If you choose, you can click here to see the unedited pictures posted on Facebook by the East Liverpool police.)

 

 





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