The fentanyl-opioid crisis is hitting young people hard and some of the highest death rates are in Native American communities. The Cherokee Nation is working to help families recover.
Statistics don't really show the human cost of opioid addiction in this country. What does show that is the effect on one community, one family, one 9-year-old girl who our colleague Brian Mann met in the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
MANN: Chief Hoskin says so many Cherokee families are being disrupted, a lot of children wind up being fostered or adopted outside the tribal culture. MANN: Beginning in the 1990s, drug companies flooded many Native American towns with prescription pain pills. There were pill mills here in Tahlequah - big profits being made as more and more Cherokee got addicted. Much of the public awareness during America's opioid crisis focused on rural white towns. But Gone says Native communities suffered even higher rates of opioid addiction, overdose death and suicide.
MANN: That's meant health and developmental challenges for Mazzy and Ransom. For Mazzy, it goes without saying - this is all deeply personal. And while we talk, she listens closely.MAZZY: How old was I when I, like, learned to, like, talk and stuff?MANN: Cassie, the kid's adoptive mom, says it's hard explaining to Mazzy and Ransom what's happened here.
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