(6 Mar 2018) A Michigan woman whose son died of a heroin overdose and whose daughter is currently battling addiction says her family has been "totally destroyed" by opioids.
Fran Hotchkiss spoke to The Associated Press at a church in Brownstown Township, not far from her home in the Detroit suburb of Romulus, on Tuesday, as the Centers for Disease Control reported that opioid overdose visits to hospital ERs skyrocketed last year _ the latest evidence the nation's drug crisis is getting worse.
The government says non-fatal overdoses visits to hospital emergency rooms were up 30 percent last summer, compared to the same three-month period in 2016.
According to the CDC, the biggest jumps were in the Midwest and cities, but there were increases nationwide.
Hotchkiss says her 35-year-old daughter has had three non-fatal overdoses.
"She's been over prescribed for years due to grief and physical ailments, and I recently got legal guardianship of my 13-year-old granddaughter because of it," said Hotchkiss, whose 25-year-old son, Luke Hotchkiss, died in 2014.
The CDC has been closely tracking drug overdose deaths, which rose 14 percent from July 2016 to July last year.
But data for non-fatal overdoses has been lagging years behind.
To get more current information, CDC started using a national hospital data collection system originally designed to watch for bio-terrorism incidents.
The report did not break down specific types of opioids.
Hotchkiss says the opioid crisis in the U.S. was a "hidden problem" in the years before her son's death.
  
"You didn't tell anyone. You were so humiliated. You just didn't," she said. "Now, it's coming out more into the open, and I'm glad of that."

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