Plague of opioids
The opioid crisis is a sinister scourge, racking up casualties across every demographic. The harrowing stories of families who’ve watched their children deteriorate and die are far too common.
Opioids took the lives of more than 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “On average, 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.” A full decade of losses at that level would exceed the number of American soldiers killed in World War II.
That is why it is a good thing that President Trump has made ending the opioid crisis a priority in his administration.
Yesterday in New Hampshire, where the opioid death rate is double the national average, the president brought the message to the people who have been battling the menace hardest.
Trump has kept his campaign experience in that state top of mind for the past couple of years. If this president has ever been truly touched emotionally, it was when he was crisscrossing the Granite State during his candidacy, talking to those affected by the crisis. Perhaps losing a brother to addiction himself rendered him especially sensitive, but those conversations left a deep impression.
“This scourge of drug addiction in America will stop,” the president told the crowd yesterday. “We will liberate our country from this crisis.”
It is the right message, and he is following it up with real resources and a plan that includes aggressive law enforcement components, an advertising campaign aimed at keeping kids off of drugs and improvements to the federal funding process for treatment.
Detractors in the media have predictably spent much of their time criticizing the more inflammatory parts of the speech, in which Trump called out sanctuary cities and even our own Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Many were put off by calls for the border wall and the president’s newest rhetorical fixation on enacting the death penalty for drug dealers.
By now we are used to a solemn or serious occasion being dragged into the realm of poor taste by Trump, replete with fiery oratory, but if ever there was a time to look past the sideshow to the facts on the ground it is now.
This president and our politicians in Washington are serious about opioids. Congress has already appropriated $6 billion to fight the good fight.
As awful as it is to lose Americans at wartime levels, it is heartening to see that we have also come together as if it were wartime to combat this evil.