Riverside Meadow named for Annie Young

CAM GORDON/ALLEYNEWS

Martha Anne “Annie” Young 1924-2018

By CAM GORDON

On Saturday, March 17, over 100 people gathered in Lower Riverside Park to celebrate the life of longtime Phillips resident and recently retired Minneapolis Park Commissioner, Annie Young, who passed away earlier this year on January 22. The celebration included a dedication and ribbon cutting to commemorate the renaming of Lower Riverside Park as Annie Young Meadow in her honor.

This was the same Park where Young gathered for years with a group of close-knit friends almost every Friday night to enjoy one of the gems she worked so hard to protect and to improve in her nearly 28 years as an at-large Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board Commissioner.

Related Images:

Opioid Crisis: Facts you didn”'t want to have to know

By LINDSEY FENNER

• The opioid crisis is the deadliest drug crisis in American history.
• Drug overdoses now kill more people in the U.S. than car accidents or guns.
• Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death of people under 50.
• In 2016, opioids accounted for 66 percent of drug overdoses.
• Opioids are powerful but highly addictive pain relievers that include morphine, heroin, Vicodin, Percocet, OxyContin, methadone, and fentanyl.
• It”'s getting worse in the Midwest: Between July 2016 and September 2017, opioid overdoses increased 70% in the Midwest, compared to a 30% increase in the U.S. as a whole.
• Minnesota has one of the greatest rates of disparity in the U.S. for opioid-related deaths based on race.
• In Hennepin County, Native Americans represented 10.1 percent of deaths by opioids in 2016, but only 0.6 percent of the total population. That is not a typo.
• The epidemic has shifted: At the beginning, overdose deaths were primarily from prescription opioid painkillers (aggressively marketed by pharmaceutical companies). Now heroin and fentanyl cause most overdose deaths.
• Fentanyl and derivatives like carfentanil are synthetic opioids that can be thousands of times more powerful than heroin. They are difficult to track and are often mixed with other drugs without the knowledge of the person using the drugs.