Explainers

What Is the Opioid Crisis? Analyzing Its Causes and Effects

Published by When Notes Fly

https://whennotesfly.com/explainers/how-it-works/what-is-the-opioid-crisis

When Notes Fly knowledge-library article flagged by an internal fact-check audit for a remaining factual inaccuracy.

Corrected & verified
1 contributor 1 recorded contribution 1 correction

Who created and checked this page

Correction

Emir BaycanExpert Contributor

Correction history

Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

  1. 19 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

    Corrected multiple factual errors on When Notes Fly's opioid crisis explainer: an incorrect date, an incorrect cumulative death toll, an unverifiable direct quote, and an overbroad claim about safe-injection-site outcomes that was only true of one specific site.

    Before

    Blockquote: "We did this systematically, as a matter of policy and profit." - Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain (2021). Article gave no cumulative US opioid death toll and no date for the first sanctioned US supervised-consumption site, and generalized supervised-consumption outcomes broadly rather than to the specific site studied.

    After

    Removed the unverifiable direct-quote attribution to Patrick Radden Keefe (de-quoted to a paraphrase framing). Added the real cumulative figure: more than 645,000 US opioid-involved overdose deaths 1999-2021 (CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System). Added the real date the first officially sanctioned US supervised consumption sites (OnPoint NYC, Washington Heights and East Harlem) began operating: November 30, 2021. Narrowed an overbroad claim about supervised-consumption-site outcomes to what the cited 2011 Lancet study actually found for Vancouver's Insite (35% reduction in overdose mortality in the surrounding area).

    Why: Fixed in the body, the FAQ, and the excerpt: an unverifiable direct quote presented in quotation marks, a missing cumulative death-toll statistic, a missing/wrong date for the first US supervised consumption site, and a claim generalized beyond what the cited study supported.

    View the full record →

Full contribution timeline

  1. Correction 19 July 2026

    Emir Baycan: Corrected multiple factual errors on When Notes Fly's opioid crisis explainer: an incorrect date, an incorrect cumulative death toll, an unverifiable direct quote, and an overbroad claim about safe-injection-site outcomes that was only true of one specific site.

    Proof record →