Oregon has lost more than 3,300 people to COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
But a comparable number of people may have lost their lives to alcohol and drug abuse in that time. And people in the addiction-recovery business want Governor Kate Brown to do something about it.
In a recent letter, 20 executives urged the governor to declare a staffing crisis in behavioral health and take steps to shore up programs that have lost staff, cut services, or just gone dormant.
Mike Marshall of Oregon Recovers and Heather Jefferis from the Oregon Council for Behavioral Health signed the letter and tell us why.