Maine newspaper puts powerful lens on ‘killer grip’ of opioid epidemic
The Portland Press Herald is delving into Maine’s opioid epidemic with a 10-part series focusing on the public health crisis and its devastating effect on families and communities across the state.
Our 10-day series on the heroin epidemic kicks off and puts the faces of those lost to addiction front and center.https://t.co/rojFA5I3o3 pic.twitter.com/Tu92mq4SaG
— Portland Press Herald (@PressHerald) March 26, 2017
More than 50 reporters, editors, and photographers worked on the year-long project, “Lost: Heroin’s killer grip on Maine’s people,” which includes reports on families that have suffered the deaths of multiple family members from overdoses and the impact on older family members and the state’s child welfare system with the children who lost caregivers to the epidemic.
In 2016, 378 people died from drug overdoses in Maine, according to the newspaper. Astonishing graphics show how fatal drug overdoses in Maine compared to deaths from homicides, car crashes, fires, and breast cancer.
As part of the series, the Press Herald profiled 60 Mainers who died of overdoses, from a 25-year-old who dreamed of pitching in the Major Leagues to a 36-year-old artist in Portland.
Among the epidemic’s victims is Mark Berglund, a 50-year-old Massachusetts native whose wife, Dee, told the Press Herald was “the fun one.”
Berglund became dependant on prescription painkillers and alcohol following a series of surgeries in 2009 and 2010, according to the newspaper, and died of an overdose in March 2016.
“He had seven terrible years,” Dee Berglund told the Press Herald. “But he had 43 really good years.”
Read the series “Lost: Heroin’s killer grip on Maine’s people” here.
