EDITORIAL: Tuesday’s President should declare a national health emergency on opioids

Aug. 08--A plague has descended on the United States and it's time the federal government steps in to lend its support to states and communities trying to fight its lethality.

The plague is opioid abuse and it's taking the lives of thousands of Americans annually. Opioid deaths in the United States have quadrupled since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And this epidemic is increasingly in its ferocity monthly.

President Trump has now been called upon to recognize this opioid plague by declaring it a national emergency. The call came from a White House commission he had set up to explore possible federal responses to opioid abuse.

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.

Florida is one of six states that has rightly used a declaration of statewide emergency to respond to the opioid crisis.

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 Florida will have more opioid deaths in 2016 than during the height of the pill mill crisis, reported The Tampa Bay Times.

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.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a public health state of emergency earlier this year and the city of Jacksonville has embarked on a pilot program to catch the victims with treatment early.

New legislation targets dealers, Incredibly, previously dealers of fetanyl could only be charged with possession.

Aa Florida Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi said, we need more money for treatment. But substance abuse and mental health have long been treated like stepchildren in the state budget.

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 Jacksonville, that has helped free funding to expand access to the overdose-reversal drug naloxone and initiate a unique citywide response that includes a program that will target opioid abusers from the moment they enter an emergency room, guiding them through a beefed-up rehabilitation program.

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.

A Sept. 11 disaster every three weeks

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who headed the White House commission that recently called for a public health emergency declaration, has pleaded with the president to take quick action to alleviate this epidemic.

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 CNN. "If that's not a national health emergency, I don't know what is."

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 Afghanistan and the Iraq War.

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, President Trump, take action now.

Our neighbors are dying.

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