Health security

Opiate epidemic said to recall AIDS in the ’80s

The opioid epidemic has become this generation’s pressing public health crisis with the same devastating effect as the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s, a top health expert said.

The warning comes as a cluster of HIV cases linked to dirty needles used to shoot up heroin and fentanyl was discovered in the Lowell-Lawrence region, as the Herald reported earlier this week.

That coupled with more than 2,000 people dying from opiate overdoses last year is an epidemic “heading in the wrong direction,” said Carl Sciortino, executive director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, which has merged with Fenway Health.

“We’re not reaching everyone in the streets ... and we’re not doing enough to keep them alive,” Sciortino said yesterday. “We’re already losing a generation.”

He likened the drug scourge to the AIDS epidemic of the early ’80s, which was also stymied by a “stigma” — the same negativity plaguing the opioid crisis. But just like AIDS, drug addiction hits in the suburbs and the city.