{"id":1631,"date":"2024-03-11T16:46:52","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T17:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2024-03-12T21:03:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T21:03:23","slug":"overdose-or-poisoning-a-new-debate-over-what-to-call-a-drug-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=1631","title":{"rendered":"Overdose or Poisoning? A New Debate Over What to Call a Drug Death."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Grieving families want official records and popular discourse to move away from reflexive use of \u201coverdose,\u201d which they believe blames victims for their deaths.<\/p>\n

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The death certificate for Ryan Bagwell, a 19-year-old from Mission, Texas, states that he died from a fentanyl overdose.<\/p>\n

His mother, Sandra Bagwell, says that is wrong.<\/p>\n

On an April night in 2022, he swallowed one pill from a bottle of Percocet, a prescription painkiller that he and a friend bought earlier that day at a Mexican pharmacy just over the border. The next morning, his mother found him dead in his bedroom.<\/p>\n

A federal law enforcement lab found that none of the pills from the bottle tested positive for Percocet. But they all tested positive for lethal quantities of fentanyl.<\/p>\n

\u201cRyan was poisoned,\u201d Mrs. Bagwell, an elementary-school reading specialist, said.<\/p>\n

As millions of fentanyl-tainted pills inundate the United States masquerading as common medications, grief-scarred families have been pressing for a change in the language used to describe drug deaths. They want public health leaders, prosecutors and politicians to use \u201cpoisoning\u201d instead of \u201coverdose.\u201d In their view, \u201coverdose\u201d suggests that their loved ones were addicted and responsible for their own deaths, whereas \u201cpoisoning\u201d shows they were victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I tell someone that my child overdosed, they assume he was a junkie strung out on drugs,\u201d said Stefanie Turner, a co-founder of Texas Against Fentanyl<\/a>, a nonprofit organization that successfully lobbied Gov. Greg Abbott to authorize statewide awareness campaigns about so-called fentanyl poisoning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I tell you my child was poisoned by fentanyl, you\u2019re like, \u2018What happened?\u2019\u201d she continued. \u201cIt keeps the door open. But \u2018overdose\u2019 is a closed door.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Grieving families want official records and popular discourse to move away from reflexive use of \u201coverdose,\u201d which they believe blames victims for their deaths.The death certificate for Ryan Bagwell, a 19-year-old from Mission, Texas, states that he died from a fentanyl overdose.His mother, Sandra Bagwell, says that is wrong.On an April night in 2022, he swallowed one pill from a bottle of Percocet, a prescription painkiller that he and a friend bought earlier that day at a Mexican pharmacy just over the border. The next morning, his mother found him dead in his bedroom.A federal law enforcement lab found that none of the pills from the bottle tested positive for Percocet. But they all tested positive for lethal quantities of fentanyl.\u201cRyan was poisoned,\u201d Mrs. Bagwell, an elementary-school reading specialist, said.As millions of fentanyl-tainted pills inundate the United States masquerading as common medications, grief-scarred families have been pressing for a change in the language used to describe drug deaths. They want public health leaders, prosecutors and politicians to use \u201cpoisoning\u201d instead of \u201coverdose.\u201d In their view, \u201coverdose\u201d suggests that their loved ones were addicted and responsible for their own deaths, whereas \u201cpoisoning\u201d shows they were victims.\u201cIf I tell someone that my child overdosed, they assume he was a junkie strung out on drugs,\u201d said Stefanie Turner, a co-founder of Texas Against Fentanyl, a nonprofit organization that successfully lobbied Gov. Greg Abbott to authorize statewide awareness campaigns about so-called fentanyl poisoning.\u201cIf I tell you my child was poisoned by fentanyl, you\u2019re like, \u2018What happened?\u2019\u201d she continued. \u201cIt keeps the door open. But \u2018overdose\u2019 is a closed door.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1633,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1634,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}