I’m an addiction and emergency medicine physician in southern Arizona, a region highly politicized by the war on drugs. Both my home and the hospital where I work are less than 100 miles from Mexico, and one of our fire departments serves a city split in two by the border wall. Although I love the ways in which the cultural milieu of the borderlands enriches our community – the school mariachi bands, colorful adobe houses in the barrios, saguaro cactus in a surprisingly verdant desert, some of the best bicycle infrastructure in the country, and even the most delicious food – Tucson was the first UNESCO city of gastronomy in the U.S. – we still have our challenges.
Although Arizona doesn’t have the highest rates of opioid overdose in the country, our rates aren’t the lowest, either: we are slightly above average. Nearly one in four Arizonans rely on Medicaid for their health insurance, and these rates are even higher in the rural communities along the border. Based on the Trump administration’s frequent visits to the borderlands and promises to help us, one might be optimistic that proposed policies would reduce overdoses and improve health outcomes.
