BuzzFeed News quotes Sorg in report on rise in cocaine, fentanyl deaths
BuzzFeed News quoted Marcella Sorg, an anthropologist and research professor with the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine, in the report, “Cocaine deaths are rising at an alarming rate, and it’s because of fentanyl.” Deaths from cocaine, after holding steady for many years, increased 52 percent between 2015 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although researchers don’t fully understand why cocaine overdoses are spiking, they know that one of the biggest drivers is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, the article states. “People are putting them together — on purpose,” said Sorg, who directs the policy center’s Rural Drug and Alcohol Research Program. “I think this is an end-user phenomenon in Maine, anyway.”