Working locally to address addiction during a difficult holiday season Created: 21 December 2020 Cities and states across our country, including here in Utah are taking necessary precautions, locking down and ordering people to quarantine as COVID numbers rise. In Utah, we have already lost more than 1,000 people to COVID, but there is another crisis taking lives in our community made even worse by the COVID pandemic -- addiction. Each year Utah loses more than 400 lives to opioid overdoses. Each month more than 100 people find their way to local emergency rooms while overdosing. These numbers are expected to rise as people struggling with addiction face challenges of isolation, loss of connection to normalcy, friends and family and even their livelihoods, leading into the holiday season.