The Forgotten Disaster
By Louisiana Progress College Fellow and Southern University student Keondra Carter
Driving through Southeast Louisiana often feels like stepping back in time. While many admire the stoic oak trees, grand mansions, and archaic plantations of the antebellum South, I find myself drawn to the region’s less-celebrated history. Passing through New Orleans, I see abandoned, once vibrant homes and can’t help but wonder what led to their decay. While there may be a variety of reasons, one likely answer, similar to many of the issues in Louisiana, is tied to the impact and destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
In one of these structures, an open door caught my eye. Part of me hoped it might serve as a temporary refuge for someone in need, but another part knew the harsher truth: Many of these homes are used for darker purposes, often as spaces for drug use and fleeting escapes from reality. It’s a sobering reminder of the enduring ripple effects of Hurricane Katrina—a storm whose devastation carved physical, social, and emotional scars into the fabric of the region.That thought hit me even harder when I remembered that 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the hurricane, a tragedy that forever changed Louisiana on August 29, 2005.
The devastating storm claimed 1,170 lives across Louisiana and left an indelible mark on our collective memory. This anniversary will undoubtedly bring moments of remembrance and heartfelt tributes from local, state, and national leaders. Yet, as we honor those we lost two decades ago, it’s critical to also turn our attention to another crisis that is devastating our communities much more quietly. In 2023 alone, 1,130 lives in Louisiana were lost to opioid-related deaths, an equally heartbreaking toll that was virtually left unmentioned in the 2024 Louisiana political cycle.
My cousin was one of those lives lost in 2023. He will be reflected to the world as a data point that corresponds to a 21-year-old Black male in East Baton Rouge Parish, lost due to complications related to an overdose. What will not be seen is how he was a beloved son, brother, grandson, nephew, uncle, cousin, and my best friend. As I lived through 2024, I selfishly hoped to see his death acknowledged in some grander way by the world around me. I subconsciously watched press releases, praying for a brief acknowledgment by our state officials of a life lost to opioid addiction, even if his name wasn’t specifically mentioned. But as I watched the news around me, I was left disappointed by the lack of public recognition and action towards the crisis that took his life and the lives of those similar to him.
While it pained me to see his plight go ignored, it didn’t shock me. Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) have long been stigmatized, despite addiction being declared a disease by the American Medical Association more than 35 years ago. This especially rings true within the criminal justice system, which was built on a foundation of criminalizing mental health disorders, specifically SUD. Unlike other chronic illnesses, where compassion and medical treatment are prioritized, people with SUDs often face harsh judgment and neglect.
The opioid crisis and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina both reveal the profound vulnerabilities of communities when systemic support structures fail. Just as floodwaters breached levees in New Orleans, inundating neighborhoods and exposing underlying inequalities, the opioid epidemic has surged across Louisiana, overwhelming healthcare systems and exposing gaps in addiction treatment and prevention. Both crises disproportionately affect marginalized populations, compounding pre-existing disparities in access to resources. In the wake of both storms, we are left with weathered people in weathered homes praying to be saved, with help often coming far too late, if at all.
Nationally, the federal government has recently leveraged the American Disabilities Act to increase protections for people with SUDs. While some states are acknowledging their wrongs of the past by improving their approach to addiction, specifically the opioid crisis, Louisiana appears to be lagging behind them when it comes to offering basic medical care and treatment.
Louisiana has very few facilities that are licensed to treat opioid addiction. Even fewer are equipped to treat those within the state’s prison system, a harrowing fact for the state with the leading incarceration rate. Likely stemming from the lack of regard for substance use treatment, Louisiana is simultaneously experiencing an extreme spike in overdose-related fatalities, with a 432% increase from 2014-2021.
While the opioid crisis manifests differently across the country, its devastating impact is especially evident in Louisiana’s prisons. Here, the surging tide of the opioid epidemic converges with the entrenched cycle of mass incarceration, creating a catastrophic current that claims countless lives. According to Louisiana’s Department of Correction, “73% of people remanded to DPS&C custody have substance abuse issues that contribute to their criminal behavior."
Despite this clear connection between crime and SUD, our state’s prison industrial complex still chooses to fund new prisons while allocating a small fraction of its resources to actual substance use treatment. Choices like this have severe consequences and, similar to the harrowing stories of prisoners left behind during Katrina, we are seeing the opioid crisis have a disproportionate and deadly impact on our state’s prison populations.
In recent years, there has been an increasing number of deaths among incarcerated people and people who are released from incarceration, with many of those deaths being drug-related. This seems especially true in local Louisiana jails where, according to Loyola University’s School of Law, drug-related deaths in local corrections facilities appear to be much worse than in state-run prisons.
Despite some regulations being put into place, new prison opioid treatment regulations aren’t properly enforced across the nation due to personal bias and misconceptions toward SUD, and prisons that do attempt to comply struggle to maintain supplies for all patients in need.
Some states are making attempts to tackle this issue directly within their corrections systems. Florida’s Department of Corrections has addressed the epidemic of SUDs by establishing the Bureau of Substance Use Treatment / Programs. This long-standing institution focuses specifically on providing treatment for people with SUD within the context of incarceration and re-entry.
Louisiana appeared to be moving in a similar direction when it received a significant grant from the federal government to introduce the Louisiana ROAR Program, which aimed to provide pre-and post-release substance abuse treatment for 300 offenders with opioid use disorders at Bayou Dorcheat Correctional Center. Unfortunately, funding for this program ended in 2022.
With the opioid epidemic continuing to grow in Louisiana, our leaders must look to the future and begin taking proactive and long-term measures to fight back. The slow response to properly addressing the opioid crisis parallels that of the government’s response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Delayed and inadequate public health interventions have allowed the epidemic to escalate, leaving communities struggling to recover. Both tragedies highlight the urgent need for resilient infrastructure—physical levees and robust healthcare systems—to protect and sustain communities in the face of compounding disasters.
Both of these disasters also display the inhumane cruelty of leaving behind vulnerable populations to succumb to preventable death. As we enter the new year, I urge those who have dedicated their lives to servant-leadership to reflect on the history of Louisiana’s most fatal natural storm and properly respond to the storm of addiction. It is past time for this state to take on the mantle of properly addressing the vast number of lives lost already to, and the even greater number of lives affected by, the opioid crisis.
