Few things double within a single year, but when they do it usually indicates a problem. This seems to be the case regarding deaths from drug overdoses in Muscogee County, Ga.
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), deaths caused by drug overdose doubled in Muscogee County from 2020 to 2021.
The number of overdose deaths within Muscogee County is so large that it is causing a backlog of autopsies at the GBI’s State Crime Lab. The backlog forces families to wait a month or more for the return of their loved one’s remains so they may be laid to rest.
Several factors may be to blame for the staggering increase in Muscogee County’s overdose death rate.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s interim director, John Melvin, the colossal increase in deaths comes largely as a result of the state’s fentanyl crisis.
“Two-thirds of our autopsies are overdose deaths, and those are on a steep increase because of the fentanyl crisis that the state of Georgia is experiencing,” Melvin said in a report published by WRBL.
Fentanyl is a highly potent synthetic opioid. It is largely manufactured in China and then smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, contributing to nation-wide spikes in overdose deaths. The dangerous substance is often laced into many illegal drugs causing drug users to unknowingly ingest the fentanyl, resulting in their death.
Just two weeks ago, a Columbus man was arrested after being caught with $34,000 worth of fentanyl-laced methamphetamine during a traffic stop in Uptown Columbus on August 7, 2022. It serves as an example of how prevalent drug use is within the city.
There are, however, other factors that contribute to an increase in overdose deaths and drug use in the first place. According to the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, high rates of drug use often arise from a combination of risk factors coming together within an environment that allows those factors to take hold. The concept is analogous to how plants only grow if the right seed is given the right conditions specifically needed for it to take root.
The statistically-identifiable risk factors named by the NIH that contribute to drug use include a lack of parental supervision, low peer refusal skills (peer pressure), availability of drugs at school, and high rates of community poverty. This does not mean that any single factor like poverty directly causes drug use, but rather that the combined factors tend to precede drug use and then the two tend to rise together within a given environment.
Many of the NIH’s cited risk factors are long-known to exist within Columbus. Most Columbusites would likely agree that Columbus provides the sort of environment that causes drug use to flourish — and the data proves them right in saying so.
The poverty rate in Columbus remains higher than 20%. That’s more than one-in-five Columbusites living below the poverty line. In fact, poverty within Columbus has increased by 11% since 2012, while Georgia’s poverty rate and that of the nation overall have decreased by 16% and 19% respectively.
Columbusites are living more and more in poverty while the state and nation, on average, continue to rise up out of it. It begs the question of, “why,” especially since Columbus began so many economic development initiatives designed to produce the exact opposite effect.
The likely answer may seem counterintuitive at first, but we have to look back at what occurred when poverty began to rise again in Columbus around 2012.
The timeframe of when the Columbus poverty rate began to rise and deviate from that of the state and nation coincides with the administration of the city’s previous mayor, Teresa Tomlinson. While famed by many altruistic Columbusites for the short-term “feel good” effects of starting economic development initiatives, the unsustainable long-term side effects were also forewarned of at the time; many simply chose to ignore them in exchange for the short-term “feel good” effects.
The actions taken by these economic development efforts have quite obviously backfired. We are now witnessing those long-term effects that went ignored for years as they took root.
The “Columbus 2025” initiative is a case-study example. Designed and implemented by a private/public collaboration of Columbus elite in 2014 — many of whom Tomlinson held long-standing personal relationships with — Columbus 2025 continues to wield huge political influence applied through the locally-acclaimed social status and checkbooks of a few wealthy and influential Columbusites.
For eight years, the initiative has specifically aimed to reduce poverty as one of its core objectives. However, while Columbus 2025 may well have good intentions and genuinely seek to create a more competitive and prosperous region, their level of competence in actually doing so has measurably fallen short.
The group was also responsible for the development of the city’s new logo, the backstory of which was covered in an opinion piece published by The Muckraker. While intended to attract people to Columbus in an effort to grow the area economically, the logo quickly made satirical headlines across the nation and continues to repel people away from the city. The logo was ironically received by the public as an example of the city’s incompetence — the exact opposite of what Columbus 2025 was tasked with achieving.
This same sort of irony can be seen through the measurable effects of programs like Columbus 2025 across the board. Their political influence and power — largely bought through social and monetary capital in lieu of competence and merit— have categorically resulted in increased poverty, rampant drug use, and death.
The doubling of drug overdose deaths within Muscogee County is, statistically speaking, likely to be yet another unfortunate result of lending local political power to the altruistic and socially-wealthy instead of to the analytically competent who are capable of solving these problems long-term.
Competence matters, and the long-term measurable results suggest a lack of it. Perhaps it’s time Muscogee County tried something else.
