EDITORIAL: Tuesday’s President should declare a national health emergency on opioids
The plague is opioid abuse and it's taking the lives of thousands of Americans annually. Opioid deaths in
And this epidemic is increasingly in its ferocity monthly.
It's time the president heeds that call.
Among other things, an emergency declaration could give the government the ability to expand access to in-patient drug treatment and possibly negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the costs of both overdose-reversal drugs and the medications used in drug-replacement therapy.
SHOCKING STATS
The opioid crisis has taken just about everyone by surprise.
Its precursors could be the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s except this crisis is not focused on minority communities -- it is widespread from inner city to beachfronts.
It now appears that
A report from medical examiners shows more Floridians were killed by fetanyl and heroin in the first six months of 2016 than in all of 2015.
Nationally, overdose deaths from illicit opiates nearly tripled from 2011 to 2015.
New legislation targets dealers, Incredibly, previously dealers of fetanyl could only be charged with possession.
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It's not going to be easy or quick. A new report from the National Academies states that the nation lacks the system to confront this epidemic.
SOLUTIONS
Solutions involve better education of those prescribing painkillers, more treatment and research into options for addictive painkillers.
It took nearly two decades for this crisis to develop and it won't be solved overnight.
More than two million people are addicted to prescription painkillers and almost 600,00 are hooked on heroin.
In
But we must fund such responses everywhere.
In some spots in America, experts estimate that 1 in 10 residents is addicted to opioids.
This plague is one that doesn't recognize age, race, gender or socio-economic status.
It can strike the elderly person who began taking opioid drugs for pain and now can't stop taking them due to their addictive qualities.
It can attack the middle-aged businessman who takes an illegal drug only to find it's been cut with an opioid so powerful it addicts him on that first use.
It can capture mothers, fathers, laborers, service workers, teenagers, minorities, the rich, the poor, the educated, the uneducated ... everyone.
They're not bad people. They are us.
You see opioids -- and particularly that opioid-on-steroids, fentanyl, which is cut into other drugs -- are some of the most addictive categories of drugs out there.
They can not only harm both individuals and their families, they can kill.
And they can injure entire communities.
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The deaths are beginning to mount too fast, he says.
"We have a 9/11-scale loss every three weeks," he noted in an interview with
After -- or coincidentally with -- the declaration of a health emergency, the federal government must look quickly for ways to stem the crisis and aid its victims.
And those responses must be wide-ranging.
Rehab centers must examine and possibly re-structure programs that don't give opioid addicts the treatment time necessary to escape their ties to these extraordinarily powerful drugs.
Insurance providers must increase access to necessary long-term treatment programs. Medicaid, which currently pays for one-fourth of all substance-abuse treatment, should be expanded.
Care providers -- such as health-care providers, nursing home staff, psychologists and others -- must receive continuing education on ways to deal with the crisis.
Courts should receive help with setting up drug programs that can steer addicts into treatment instead of prison. Correctional facilities should establish treatment programs for addicted inmates.
The list goes on.
MORE DEATHS THAN WAR
All these changes and more are needed to fight an epidemic that has the potential to destroy this country.
When put in perspective the toll opioids are taking is terrifying.
A combined 7,000 Americans lost their lives over years of waging Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Freedom's Sentinel in
Three times that many American lost their lives to opioids last year alone.
The first step in the country's War on Opioids should be a declaration of a public health emergency.
So please,
Our neighbors are dying.
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