A8 The BulleTin • Thursday, July 21, 2022
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Central Oregon
has a fentanyl
supply problem
W
e are buried in it.
That’s how Sgt. Kent Vander Kamp of the
Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office described how
bad the fentanyl problem is in Central Oregon. He is part of the
Central Oregon Drug Enforcement team. And he says every case
the CODE team deals with involves fentanyl.
It’s a synthetic opioid. It can cost
15 cents to 20 cents to make a pill.
They can be sold for $1 wholesale.
On the street in Bend, they can be
sold for $5 to $6 a pill. It’s typically
cheaper than heroin. Addicts say
it gives them a higher high. People
take pills or smoke it. It sometimes
gets mixed with pot or passed off as
OxyContin or oxycodone.
The illegal pills aren’t made with
quality control. Dosages can vary
from zero milligrams in a pill to 1
milligram to 2 milligrams. A pre-
scription dose can be 2 micrograms.
A dose of 1 milligram can kill. And
the overdoses can happen in a man-
ner of seconds. There’s little time
for a victim or anyone with them to
take action.
“Taking it is a modern day ver-
sion of Russian Roulette,” Vander
Kamp said.
The Oregon Health Authority re-
cently announced drug overdoses
from opioids doubled in the state
from 2019 to 2021. Most of that is
attributed to the spread of fentanyl.
We reached out to the CODE team
to try to better understand what is
going on here.
Kids buy it. Adults buy it. Vander
Kamp said they have found 60- and
70- year olds buying it thinking
they have found a great deal on dis-
counted prescription medication.
All indications are most of the il-
legal production is in Mexico based
on ingredients made in China.
People on the CODE team know
when a shipment comes into Cen-
tral Oregon. Overdose cases start
going up. They have seen it come
into the area any way drugs can
come in, by plane, car, train, mail.
It can get marketed on social media
apps and delivered.
The CODE team’s role is to look
at “cartel-level” operations. They
aren’t focused on individual dealers
as much as they are the level above
that. It’s an interdisciplinary unit
with representatives from local and
federal agencies. It varies in size
from 12 to 50 people.
People who misuse opioids can
be successfully treated for addic-
tion. And that’s one aspect of ad-
dressing the problem. But it’s also
about stopping the supply.
Take the Envision
Bend survey, please
T
ake the Envision Bend
survey.
You can find it here, ti-
nyurl.com/EnvisionBendsurvey.
We should be up front that The
Bulletin is a community partner
with Envision Bend to help get the
word out about what it is doing.
That survey is going to be key to
the group’s work. It wants as many
people as it can to share their per-
spectives on what they value, what
they see as Bend’s challenges and
what Bend could or should do
about it. Envision Bend is hoping
to find areas where people agree on
what we should do to move forward
as a community and help formulate
a plan of action.
The survey is an online survey.
We spoke with representatives
from Envision Bend Tuesday and
they acknowledged it is not scien-
tific. That means it will suffer from,
█
at least, selection bias. But the or-
ganization is sincerely making the
effort to get as many people from
as many different backgrounds and
perspectives to take it. And it is cer-
tainly cheaper than paying a poll-
ing firm tens of thousands of dol-
lars to do a scientific one, though
not better.
One focus of Envision Bend’s
might be on ideas to bridge the
town’s east/west divide. Another
might be on mental health. There
are already community and govern-
ment efforts on many topics. En-
vision Bend is trying to fill in gaps,
not repeat work that is already be-
ing done.
So, take the Envision Bend sur-
vey. It’s about acting as a commu-
nity to build a better future for the
community. Finding common
ground will be tricky on many sub-
jects. It’s important to try.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor Gerry O’Brien
and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
Perinatal mental health support after Roe
BY WENDY DAVIS AND
CHRISTENA RAINES
A
ccess to safe, legal, and in-
formed options related to
pregnancy is fundamental to
providing equitable heal thcare. Re-
stricting access disproportionately
impacts communities of color and
those with limited resources. By over-
turning Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme
Court has potentially exacerbated the
risks of pregnancy, including rates of
perinatal mental health disorders and
even maternal mortality.
Pregnancy and postpartum men-
tal health, also known as “perinatal
mental health,” represents a serious
and on-going public health crisis,
requiring a concerted effort to im-
prove access to care for pregnant and
postpartum individuals. Increasing
awareness and education among the
public, professional communities,
and policy makers. It is essential that
we work to make progress and close
the gaps in our health care system to
ensure a lasting difference in the lives
of parents.
Perinatal mental health disorders
are one of the most common compli-
cations during and after pregnancy,
and according to the American Col-
lege of Obstetricians and Gynecolo-
gists one in seven women or approxi-
mately 500,000 U.S. women who give
birth will experience one of these dis-
orders annually. Pregnant and post-
partum individuals, adoptive par-
ents, grandparents, and families of
all kinds are susceptible to the effects
of perinatal mental health disorders.
Untreated and unrecognized perina-
GUEST COLUMN
tal mental health disorders can lead
to serious lifelong consequences for
parents, babies, and their families.
The pandemic exacerbated many
existing health disparities and chal-
lenges, and perinatal mental health
is no exception. Rates of postpartum
depression among American moth-
ers rose nearly three-fold during
the COVID-19 pandemic, along
with large increases in major de-
pression and thoughts of self-harm,
according to a 2022 study called
COVID-19 MAMAS (Maternal At-
tachment, Mood, Ability, and Sup-
port), conducted by University of
Michigan researchers. As we read-
just to new normal, persistent bar-
riers continue to prevent families
from accessing helpful resources.
The court ruling on Roe creates
an additional barrier to the auton-
omy between perinatal patients and
health care providers.
Education is essential. Profession-
als and parents are often unaware of
resources available to support peri-
natal mental health needs. Many
underestimate the prevalence and
the many types of perinatal mental
health disorders, as well as the length
of time a person is at risk.
A recent survey conducted by
Southpaw Insights on behalf of
Postpartum Support International,
found that only a third of adults
know that a person is at risk of post-
partum depression 12 months or
more after the birth of a child. In
addition, few Americans are aware
of the prevalence of other possible
perinatal mental health conditions
that a person can experience during
pregnancy and/or through the first
year postpartum. These include
perinatal panic disorder, obses-
sive-compulsive disorder, insomnia,
post-traumatic stress, mania, and
psychosis.
Postpartum Support International
has worked for the past 35 years to
promote awareness, prevention, and
treatment of mental health issues re-
lated to childbearing in every coun-
try worldwide. Decades of experi-
ence have shown that leaning into
the lived experience of help-seekers
and providing evidence-based inter-
ventions are essential to support the
specific needs of each individual.
Equitable health care — includ-
ing mental health care — for all
pregnant, postpartum and post-loss
individuals and their families is a
fundamental human right. Patients,
along with their trusted health care
providers, should be afforded the au-
tonomy to make important decisions
about their own physical and mental
health.
All families suffering with perina-
tal mental health deserve an inclusive
and supportive environment- espe-
cially in this post-Roe world.
█
Wendy Davis, is the executive director of
Postpartum Support International and is a
psychotherapist specializing in perinatal mental
health. Christena Raines is a dual trained nurse
practitioner in women’s health and board
certified in Psychiatric-Mental Health and serves
on PSI’s board of directors.
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The world’s oldest trees can outlive anything except humans
BY FAYE FLAM
Bloomberg
W
hat’s captured people’s attention about
the Washburn fire raging in Yosemite
isn’t just its size or scope, but the fact
that it threatens a giant Sequoia with a name,
Grizzly Giant, and an extreme age: It’s almost
3,000 years old.
The oldest trees have scientific as well as sen-
timental value. There’s something alarming
about the thought that anything hardy enough
to live through multiple millennia could now
be in trouble. As it turns out, climate change is
not even the worst hazard the oldest trees face.
Trees possess a quality that humans had once
attributed to gods: They don’t age. Or as forest
ecologist Nathan Stephenson puts in a more
scientifically accurate way, there’s a growing
school of thought that trees don’t undergo se-
nescence, a programmed slide toward decline
and death that puts a limit on the lives of an-
imals. “They die from accidents, like getting
attacked by bark beetles, getting burned in a
fire … getting infected by a pathogen,” said Ste-
phenson, who is a scientist emeritus with the
USGS Western Ecological Research Center.
Someone once did a calculation, he said, that
if humans didn’t senesce but only died when
our luck ran out, the average lifespan would be
about 700 years. Some unlucky people would
die at five, and some lucky ones would live
thousands of years.
Trees, including giant Sequoias, don’t have
life expectancies of 3,000 or more years. Most
never survive the sapling stage, and of those
that reach adulthood, most never get to their
1,000th birthday. But a few can last thousands
of years.
The only way to ascertain the age of a living
tree is to take a pencil-thin section from the
trunk and count the rings. While scientists can
pick up clues about which trees are likely to be
very old, it’s almost inevitable that the oldest
tree in the world is growing in a remote spot —
unmeasured, unknown and unnamed.
But among known trees, the oldest grow in
an arid set of jutting peaks called the White
Mountains, near California’s border with Ne-
vada. They’re called bristlecone pines — mid-
size trees, with gnarled branches that look
like long-dead driftwood. The living bark and
needles cover just a few strips and patches of
the mostly dead wood. Bristlecones have been
measured at ages close to 5,000 years, having
sprouted from seeds when humans were just
inventing writing on clay tablets.
The oldest ones take root in the harshest en-
vironments — the driest, windiest, roughest
mountains with the chalkiest soils — places
inhospitable to predators, tree-eating beetles,
tree-rotting microbes and smaller plants that
might build up brushfire fuel.
The ones that live in nicer spots, such as the
lower-elevation hills of Death Valley, are more
vulnerable, and indeed, some of those are now
dying, suffering from beetle infestations and
other side effects of human-generated climate
change.
The very oldest trees are good at standing up
to changes in climate — that’s one of their su-
perpowers — but there are some threats that
even they can’t endure.
The world’s oldest recorded tree, called Pro-
metheus, was killed in 1964. A scientist tried to
take a core sample using drill called an incre-
ment borer. When the instrument got stuck in
the tree, the researcher called the Forest Ser-
vice for help. They said there were plenty of old
trees like this one and called in a crew with a
chainsaw to cut it down. After the fact, the sci-
entist, who was a graduate student at the time,
counted the rings and discovered to his horror
that it was nearly 5,000 years old. They’d just
chopped down the world’s oldest tree.
The current oldest living tree, a bristlecone
called Methuselah, endured the extraction of
a tree ring core without harm, but spent years
getting torn apart by tourists wanting a piece
of bark. Now scientists try to keep its location
secret.
There’s another threat. Stephenson said that
the trees are well adapted to a natural cycle of
fire, but not to the kinds of megafires that re-
sult when humans suppress fire for decades,
allowing an explosive buildup of small trees,
brush and other fuel. When those finally catch,
flames can rise more than 100 feet and burn the
crowns. He said fires have killed 13% to 19% of
all the giant Sequoias in the last few years alone.
Our current period of global warming and
Southwestern drought are also contributing
risk factors for megafires.
And of course, global warming is cause for
alarm even if it spares the toughest, oldest trees.
The more enduring threat of climate change is
the collapse of complex ecosystems. It will leave
us in a diminished world, a world less able to
provide food and clean water to billions of hu-
mans. The most weather-hardened gods, look-
ing down from their Olympus, won’t miss us.
█
Faye Flam is a Bloomberg columnist covering science. She is
host of the “Follow the Science” podcast.