Virus Pandemic, Opioid Epidemic Collide Around Social Distancing

The physical distancing needed to mitigate the worst pandemic in more than a century could exacerbate the opioid epidemic and other public health emergencies that continue to loom in the face of Covid-19, the head of NIH’s drug abuse research programs said.

Before Covid-19, the nation was already grappling with an opioid crisis, rising rates of methamphetamine use, and a surge in teenage vaping. Those haven’t gone away during the pandemic, potentially making those groups more vulnerable to the new respiratory virus, Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, cautioned. ...