With an estimated 142 Americans now dying every day from drug overdoses, the Trump administration is poised to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency.
Two-thirds of those deaths are accounted for by prescription painkillers such as Percocet and OxyContin and the street drugs heroin and fentanyl. The number of opioid pills prescribed in the US has quadrupled since 1999, as has the number of opioid overdoses, the interim report of the presidential commission on combating drug addiction and the opioid crisis noted in July. Yet “there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain Americans have reported in that period”, the commission wrote, and far too few people receive any treatment for their addiction.
Almost 100 people are dying every day across America from opioid overdoses – more than car crashes and shootings combined. The majority of these fatalities reveal widespread addiction to powerful prescription painkillers. The crisis unfolded in the mid-90s when the US pharmaceutical industry began marketing legal narcotics, particularly OxyContin, to treat everyday pain. This slow-release opioid was vigorously promoted to doctors and, amid lax regulation and slick sales tactics, people were assured it was safe. But the drug was akin to luxury morphine, doled out like super aspirin, and highly addictive. What resulted was a commercial triumph and a public health tragedy. Belated efforts to rein in distribution fueled a resurgence of heroin and the emergence of a deadly, black market version of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The crisis is so deep because it affects all races, regions and incomes
Here are five things the Trump administration could do today to ease America’s opioid crisis.
