October marks National Substance Use Prevention Month, making it an ideal time to ramp up overdose prevention messaging. Amid the ongoing opioid epidemic, prevention messaging has become critical to saving lives.
Synthetic opioids like fentanyl are the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States. Local drug education and prevention campaigns and organizations play a vital role.
However, some critical prevention messaging should be on repeat and reach LGBTQ communities and every community across the nation.
Most people would agree that the opioid epidemic began with overprescribing legal pain medication like OxyContin. Pharmaceutical companies used deceptive marketing and advertising of their products being safe and effective.