Too many people are dying from opioid overdoses. Prevention sites would save lives.

This safe site for drug users was set up in a vacant lot at Pulaski Road and Van Buren Street on the West Side. It’s a joint effort by the University of Illinois-Chicago and the West Side Heroin Opioid Task Force. (Brian Rich/Sun-Times)

If you heard an ambulance last night, there’s a good chance it was taking a person with an opioid overdose to a hospital. Over 12,000 emergency medical system calls related to opioid overdoses were logged statewide in 2020-2021, which is 34 calls a day, on average, a 60% increase from 2019. And there were 3,013 overdose deaths in Illinois in 2021, a 35% increase from 2019. The current numbers for 2022 show that we’ll reach, if not surpass, the number of deaths in 2021.

Most of those calls and deaths came from Chicago’s West Side.