The centers, also called harm-reduction or safe-use sites, are where people can use illegal drugs and, if necessary, be revived from an overdose by trained staff
overdose
Posted inNews
Unhoused Coloradans turn to methamphetamine as a form of protection
In Colorado Springs, meth accounts for majority of drug overdose deaths. Many of the deceased were living outside, using the drug to stay awake.
Posted inSun Investigation
Colorado libraries keep closing for meth contamination. Is it their problem to solve?
Denver metro libraries are spending tens of thousands of dollars to clean up meth residue in their bathrooms.
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Knowingly having more than 1 gram of fentanyl would be felony under change to Colorado bill
Knowingly possessing more than 1 gram of fentanyl or a fentanyl compound for personal use would be a felony in Colorado under an amendment passed Wednesday afternoon by the House Judiciary Committee to a bill seeking to stem rising overdose deaths linked to the powerful synthetic opioid. The committee’s 7-4 vote to adopt the amendment […]
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Deaths among Denver area homeless nearly double from five years ago
The number of people who are homeless in the Denver area doubled from 2020 to 2021, and along with that increase came a surge in the number of deaths among those living outside. At least 269 people who were homeless died in Denver and surrounding counties in the last year, according to a count by […]
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The next big move to solve homelessness is a metro Denver recovery campus. But which city will host it?
Eight years ago, Colorado repurposed an old Army fort surrounded by farm fields into a homeless recovery center, a peaceful campus on the plains, far from the gritty streets where its residents previously slept. More than 1,700 people have lived at Fort Lyon, about three hours from Denver in Las Animas, and about half of […]
Posted inEducation, Health, News
Colorado’s fentanyl crisis is surging, but only three school districts have ordered doses of the opioid antidote
Editor’s note: This story was updated on Jan. 6, 2022, with new information from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to include Cherry Creek School District. As the number of fentanyl overdoses began to climb, Colorado policymakers created a program to put the life-saving opioid antidote naloxone inside police departments, universities, workplaces and […]
Posted inSun Investigation
Parents of young Coloradans killed by fentanyl call it murder. So why aren’t there more convictions?
In a matter of seconds, a tiny blue pill disguised as a prescription painkiller can kill a person with a lethal dose of fentanyl, a drug so powerful that amounts as tiny as a few grains of salt are deadly. Parents of Colorado high school and college students who have died after taking the synthetic […]
Posted inSun Investigation
After teen fentanyl overdoses, moms and community groups step up to hand out testing strips, lifesaving nasal spray
Kate Lacroix was screaming at the top of her lungs on social media. Boulder teens were dying of fentanyl, swallowing pills that looked like real pharmaceuticals but instead were counterfeits laced with lethal doses of the synthetic opioid. “URGENT COMMUNITY WARNING,” she said in one February Facebook post, begging others to help spread the word. […]
Posted inSun Investigation
How counterfeit drugs made to look like real pills have ravaged one Colorado county
Jack Swanson, 18, died in February while listening to music in his bed. Next to him were little blue pills and rectangular-shaped white ones, the kind sold in his hometown of Boulder and throughout Colorado as “mexis” and “xanny bars.” Two in five of the counterfeit pills circulating the country, drugs made in Mexico to […]