When there’s the political will, there tends to be a political way to accomplish the impossible. It appears this finally might be the case with the nation’s long-ignored epidemic of heroin and prescription opioid addiction.
When there’s the political will, there tends to be a political way to accomplish the impossible. It appears this finally might be the case with the nation’s long-ignored epidemic of heroin and prescription opioid addiction.
On Tuesday, the Obama administration unveiled a plan to ramp up spending on drug treatment and prevention.
Nationwide, about 2.2 million people need treatment for opioid abuse, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, but about only 1 million manage to get it.
To change this, the president intends to ask Congress for a fiscal year investment of $1.1 billion throughout two years.
The New Hampshire primary is coming up, and New Hampshire is a state that has been particularly ravaged by drugs. It has one of the highest rates of fatal opioid overdoses in the country.
That means a whole lot of voters in New Hampshire want to talk about drug addiction. They want to know what the men and women running for president can do to help. They want to know what those in Congress can do about it, too — and for good reason.
More Americans die from drug overdoses now than from car crashes. In 2014, that was about 47,000 people. Most took opioid painkillers prescribed by a doctor; many others died from heroin, the cheaper alternative.
New Hampshire might have the dubious distinction of being the poster child for this epidemic, but the same drugs have taken hold of communities across the country.
One could lament that the Obama administration and Congress are acting now more because it’s politically expedient than because it’s the right thing to do for millions of Americans. While that’s obviously true and while it’s a shame, in the end, we don’t really care.
More than the politics of why, what matters is we’re facing an emergency with this seemingly unstoppable epidemic of lethal drug addiction. What matters is that something gets done.
— The Sacramento Bee