Denver metro libraries are spending tens of thousands of dollars to clean up meth residue in their bathrooms.
overdose
Posted inNews
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 […]
Posted inNews
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 […]
Posted inNews
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 […]
Posted inColoradans, Health, News, Politics and Government
Death rates for pregnant Colorado women have doubled since 2008. Here’s how the state is trying to fix it.
Nelia Borden started to scream when she realized her doctor was preparing to make an incision and use a suction tool to help her give birth. “I screamed ‘No!’ multiple times,” Borden recalled as she testified before a state Capitol committee. “I squirmed and tried to close my legs but I’d had an epidural. I […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: A law-enforcement case for supervised drug-use sites
While 2020 will always be known as the year the global COVID-19 pandemic began, there was another public health crisis playing out less publicly. Last year, at least 1,223 Coloradans died of overdoses, 20% more than in 2019. This is a tragedy, but I am hopeful it will finally be the wake-up call for our […]