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Health Care Special Session & Luncheon

“Overdose epidemic” explained at Winter Conference Health Care Luncheon Jones gives packed house chilling portrait of America’s drug problems A crowded room at the Phoenix Convention Center saw Captain Christopher Jones of the U.S. Public Health Service deliver sobering commentary on the nation’s battle against drug overdoses. In a talk entitled “The Evolving Overdose

2022 Winter Conference Crisis: Resurgent Stimulants in the Midst of the Ongoing Opioid Overdose Epidemic” Jones weaved his way through a mountain of data showing the current challenges facing corrections officers in dealing with illegal drugs and evolving substance use patterns. Captain Jones currently serves as the acting

director of the National Center for Injury Preven- tion and Control (NCIPC). When not serving as the acting director, Dr. Jones is the deputy director of NCIPC. In this role, he is the primary scientific advisor to the NCIPC director and other senior staff on science issues in public health, clinical care implementation, epidemiology, biostatistics, economics and behavioral science. He began his talk by outlining the evolving overdose crisis in the U.S. but with a special focus on resurgence stimulant use. “This is probably something you have seen

front and center in the populations you serve the last couple of years,” said Jones. Pointing to overdose trends, he said “We’ve experienced an exponential curve in drug overdose deaths from 1968 to 2020. Where what we thought were inflection points for heroin deaths in the 70s or crack cocaine in the 80s, what we see today is

50 — May/June 2022 Corrections Today