Maps Tell the Story of Drugs’ Disastrous Impact on the U.S.
Not everyone has been exposed to the catastrophic losses American families have suffered as the result of their loved ones’ addictions. What does it take to help those without first-hand knowledge understand this dangerous situation?
Increased public awareness probably won’t come from scientific studies in peer-reviewed medical journals. What makes a social catastrophe like this real to most people is photos, stories of real people and simple, impactful graphics. Now, the ArcGIS mapping website offers a fast, accurate method understanding of America’s problems through hundreds of maps featured on its website.
ArcGIS mapping software is the brainchild of Esri, a software development company. Plenty of governments, agencies, utilities and other groups use this mapping software for their own projects—showing population or housing volume, for example. This new functionality started when one of Esri’s own engineers turned a mapping project into a memorial to his younger brother, lost to drugs several years ago. He built a new map that families could add photos and stories of their loved ones’ struggles to.
Once the stories are added, they are linked to the person’s location while he was alive. The engineer launched the map with his own brother’s story and more than 400 other stories followed. Most of the stories talk about drug overdoses, but there a few drug-related deaths from accidents or other causes. The pictures the families included show one bright, beautiful person after another—so many of them only in their 20s or even their teens.
There are hundreds of other drug-related maps. Here’s a few of them:
This map of the whole United States shows intense pockets of overdose deaths in 2014.
Parents in high-volume areas would be very smart to intensify their efforts to prevent drug abuse by their children.
Do you live in Riverside County? Has anyone ever overdosed or died from excessive alcohol consumption in your neighborhood? Here’s a map that will show you that few areas of Riverside County have been spared drug or alcohol-related deaths.
How about Washington, D.C.? This map shows the number of times emergency medical personnel were called to help someone suffering the effects of powerful synthetic drugs.
It’s long been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, it might be true that a map is worth several thousand. With just a glance at some of these maps, it’s possible to grasp the amount of human pain and misery that must result from these events. Hopefully, this readily-available information will spur greater preventive action by families, communities and legislators.
