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The police department that stopped arresting drug users just put 5 drug companies on notice.

The Gloucester Police Department in Massachusetts has been receiving tons of praise since it decided to stop arresting drug users who turn themselves in back in June.



Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images.

The program — which was designed to funnel addicted persons into treatment instead of prison — is already seeing signs of success: Over 100 people have received care, and the department has been able to keep costs well below expectations.

In fact, the initiative has been so well received that it's already begun spreading to other communities around the region.

Gloucester is just one community in New England — and across the country — suffering from an opioid epidemic.

Photo by Be.Futureproof/Flickr.

According to Andrew Kolodny, senior scientist at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management, prescription drug and heroin abuse has exploded in the United States over the last 20 years, resulting in approximately 220,000 overdose deaths between 1999 and 2013.

“An enormous number of people … have lost their lives as a consequence of this epidemic," Kolodny told Upworthy, "And just to put that number into some perspective, that's [well more than] twice the number of Americans who died fighting in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined."

The Gloucester PD soon realized that solving this crisis meant confronting not only the drugs themselves, but the drug companies that make them.

Last week, the department published the names and contact info for the five highest-paid pharmaceutical company CEOs in America on Facebook and asked followers to (respectfully) give them a call:

"Don't get mad. Just politely ask them what they are doing to address the opioid epidemic in the United States and if they realize that the latest data shows almost 80% of addicted persons start with a legally prescribed drug that they make. They can definitely be part of the solution here and I believe they will be ... might need a little push."

A spokesperson for the Gloucester Police Department declined to comment further for this story.

What do drug companies have to do with this? And why are so many people developing addictions to "legally prescribed drugs?"

Photo by Luis Garcia/Wikimedia Commons.

According to Kolodny, beginning with the introduction of OxyContin in 1995, pharmaceutical companies began aggressively selling opioid painkillers, once used primarily to manage patient pain at the end of life, to hospitals and physicians for the treatment of chronic pain and exaggerating their benefits and downplaying the risk of addiction.

“There were many involved in this who truly fell for the campaign," Kolodny said. "It was compelling. There was this idea that we've got this gift from Mother Nature. Opioids [could prevent] people from suffering needlessly … and so the prescribing exploded."

Kolodny and his colleagues tracked the effects of pioid overprescribing in a recent study, which casts doubt on the assumption that addicted young people acquiring opioids illegally are the primary drivers of the epidemic. Their evidence demonstrates that, "middle-aged and elderly individuals commonly exposed to OPRs for pain treatment have experienced the largest increase in rates of opioid-related morbidity and mortality" since the late 1990s.

Inspired by their police department, the residents of Gloucester sure did give Big Pharma a "little push." And according to the chief, it worked.

On Sept. 18, 2015, Chief Leonard Campanello of the Gloucester PD announced via Facebook that Pfizer — one of the three largest pharmaceutical companies in the world — had agreed to meet with the department:

"Pssst ... Pfizer called (honestly) ... we are meeting with them. When you continue to make your calls, thank them because they could have ignored us all. Instead, within 48 hours ... they responded.

A Pfizer spokesperson confirmed that representatives from the company plan to meet with Campanello.

There's no word yet on the outcome of the conversation, but an open dialogue is a good beginning.

Photo via Unsplash/Pixabay.

If a police department can learn that arresting people isn't a cure for addiction, hopefully drug companies can learn from past mistakes too and start implementing some real, long-lasting solutions.

Bravo to the Gloucester PD for taking the first, important step in bringing much-needed relief to a group of people who badly need it.

Pop Culture

Folks are admitting that Boomers weren’t totally wrong. Here are 19 things they got right.

OK, Boomer, you're right about this one.

via Patrick Lannigan/Flickr

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

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Pop Culture

Little boy steals the show at his sister's end-of-year dance school concert

This kid was born to dance.

@kleinkwagga1/TikTok

Klein Kwagga understood the assignment at his sister's concert.

Some kids are too shy to ever want to get on a stage, some will spend most of a performance staring awkwardly at their shoes, and some kids love the opportunity to show off what they've practiced in front of an audience.

And then there are the kids were simply born for the spotlight. You know them when you see them.

When Dirkco Jansen van Nieuwenhuizen hopped on stage with all of the other brothers and sisters of the dance students at René’s Art of Dance in South Africa, no one expected a viral sensation. According to Capetown Etc, it was the school's year-end concert, and siblings were invited to come up and dance to Bernice West’s Lyfie—a popular song in Afrikaans. And Dirkco, who goes by Klein Kwagga, took the assignment and ran with it.

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Visit Sweden
Visit Sweden
Education

Sweden’s landmark new proposal will stop the world from mixing it up with Switzerland

Honestly, do you know the difference?

True

After over a thousand years of peaceful relations, European semi-superpowers Sweden and Switzerland may finally address a lingering issue between the two nations. But the problem isn’t either country’s fault. The point is that the rest of the world can’t tell them apart. They simply don’t know their kroppkakor (Swedish potato dumpling) from their birchermüesli (a Swiss breakfast dish).

This confusion on the European continent has played out in countless ways.

Swedish people who move to the United States often complain of being introduced as Swiss. The New York Stock Exchange has fallen victim to the confusion, and a French hockey team once greeted their Swiss opponents, SC Bern, by playing the Swedish National Anthem and raising the Swedish flag.

Skämtar du med mig? (“Are you kidding me?” in Swedish)

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Community

People share the most practical ways to support new parents after giving birth

Sometimes the best gift is practicality.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

People share the most practical ways to support new parents

There's a lot of preparation that goes into having a child well before they're even born. First there are the physical changes your body makes to clear up some space for a tiny human roughly the size of a watermelon. Then there's preparing the nursery, buying lots of extremely small clothes, diapers and an expected understanding that while sleep may be your friend, you won't be getting any of it for about a year.

Lots of people give plenty of advice to help you cope in the early days but after the baby arrives, the focus shifts to solely the baby. It's obviously not a deliberate shift. Babies are just more shiny and new that the parents. But not everyone forgets about the parents once baby makes their grand entrance–some go out of their way to make sure the parents feel supported.

Upworthy asked its audience, "what was the best non-baby related gift you received as a new parent," and the answers were a masterclass on how to care for new parents.

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Family

A mom seeks doctor's help for postpartum depression and instead gets a visit from the cops

Too many women lose out on much needed support because of unwarranted stigma.

Canva

Postpartum depression is very common, and treatable.

Jessica Porten recently visited her doctor four months after giving birth to her daughter, Kira. She wasn't feeling quite like herself.

She had been dealing with overwhelming sadness and fits of anger, which she knew was likely stemming from a case of postpartum depression.

In a Facebook post, Porten recounts the story of that appointment.

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Identity

Formerly enslaved man's response to his 'master' wanting him back is a literary masterpiece

"I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

GOOD

A photo of Jordan Anderson.

In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled "Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On Aug. 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance, and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in theNew York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's "The Freedman's Book."

The letter mentions a "Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), "Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son), and George Carter (a local carpenter).

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

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