Economist, Mar 10, 2018.

choi

(1) Heroin in Philadelphia | Bruised and Battered; The city plans to set up one of the country's first supervised drug-injection sites.

Quote:

"Vancouver's  where safe-injection sites have been operated since 2003

"The idea is counterintuitive: in the next year the city [Philadelphia] will permit an NGO to provide a place for drug users to go and inject themselves with potentially lethal drugs, while trying to encourage them to seek treatment for their addiction. Staff will hand out clean needles and administer naloxone [trade name Narkan], a drug that temporarily reverses heroin's effect on the brain and jump-starts breathing in those who overdose.  The experience at more than 100 injection sites in 66 cities around the world, including some in Canada, Switzerland and Germany, speak for themselves. Safe-injection sites reduce overdose deaths by as much as one-third in the immediate vicinity

"Philadelphia * * * is perhaps the most cruelly affected of big cities by the opioid epidemic. In 2016, deaths from drug overdoses increased from 702 in the previous year to 907, or 60 deaths per 100,000 residents, more than three time higher than in Chicago and four times higher than New York. Around 80% of overdose deaths involved opioids [as opposed to cocaine, say], pain-relieving drugs that include both prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and illegal ones such as heroin. Most of the victims of opioids are men (nearly three times more than women), white (double the rate of African-Americans) and aged between 35 and 59. Last year was even worse: the city estimates that around 1,200 people died, four times the number of murders in a city once nicknamed 'Killadelphia.'

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) City of Boston advises heroin users not to inject alone, and, as a group, never get high at the same time, so that one with cooler head may administer Narkan in case of an overdose.

choi

(2) Trade | A Steamroller in Reverse; The country's share of global and Asian exports has peaked.
https://www.economist.com/news/c ... as-share-global-and

Quote:

"CHINA's exporters once had little to offer the world and everything to learn from it.

"But in 2016 something unusual happened. China's share of global merchandise [excluding service, that is] exports slipped: from 13.9% to 13.5%, according to IMF data. * * *  in the first 11 months of 2017 (the latest data available) its share fell again, to less than 13%.  The story is similar [for China's merchandise] exports within Asia, points out Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics [based in Oxford, England], a forecasting firm.

"It is also tempting to place the blame wholly on deteriorating demographics and rising labour costs. But although China's working-age population is shrinking, its labour force [which I assume more women join], and urban employment, is still growing.

"Besides, China is losing market share not only to cheaper, younger countries like Vietnam. It is also ceding ground to greyer, costlier rivals like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The trio’s combined share of Asia’s exports rose by almost 1.2 percentage points from 2015 to 2017.  Exporters in these three developed economies have benefited from a powerful upswing in demand for sophisticated electronic components, such as flash memory chips

"China may be producing a declining share of the world’s exports. But it now claims a higher share of their value [by creating their own brands rather than made to foreign orders for foreign brands].