An In-depth Look at the Opioid Crisis in Cook County

By Alex Fashandi, Kelsi Morefield, and Michael Gyang

When Cook County paramedic firefighter Tony Lein arrives at the scene of an opioid overdose, he doesn’t see a drug addict or abuser.

Instead, he sees a human being struggling to breathe – a person coping with their troubles and going over the edge.

“The main experiences that I have with people who use opioids is when they overdose on it,” Lein said. “When they take too much and they experience these symptoms of an overdose, they need medical care because it [the opioid] slows everything down. You go unconscious, you’re only breathing a couple times a minute. It slows your heart rate, slows your respiratory drive. So really, they need to have that EMS [Emergency Medical Service] if they want to survive.”

This is a common scene encountered by Lein and similarly by other paramedics on the front lines of the nationwide opioid crisis.

Part of the crisis stems from prescription opioid medications. According to the Washington Post, from 2006 to 2012, enough prescription opioids were prescribed in Chicago’s Cook County to distribute 15 pills per year to each resident – that’s 566,752,649 pills.

In Cook County, several factors contribute to the opioid epidemic, experts say. Prescription opioids often get the brunt of the blame for it; however, the presence of illicit opioids such as heroin also contribute to the problem in the county. Yet, due to overall increased opioid misuse, the prevalence of stigma has grown towards the use of prescribed opioids as well as the treatment of those with opioid abuse disorders.

In August 2019, the Washington Post released an updated extended database detailing the nationwide opioid crisis in the United States. This data extended to Cook County, and included information on prescription opioid manufacturers, distributors, and distributing pharmacies, as well as overdoses and deaths.

A reflection on the recent UIC Grad Student Strike

By Abi Carlson and Alex Fashandi

On March 19, more than 1,500 University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) graduate and teaching assistants walked out of their classes in retaliation to the board failing to meet their requests for increased salaries, healthcare coverage, and decrease in administration fees.

The results of the strike, which was settled April 5 put a halt to hundreds of UIC classes for three weeks as professors were unable to teach without the help of their TA’s. This left students uncertain about what the strike meant for their future in the class.