America’s drug overdose crisis is out of control. Washington, despite a bipartisan desire to combat it, is finding its addiction-fighting programs are failing.
In 2018, Republicans, Democrats and then-President Donald Trump united around legislation that threw $20 billion into treatment, prevention and recovery. But five years later, the SUPPORT Act has lapsed and the number of Americans dying from overdoses has grown more than 60 percent, driven by illicit fentanyl. The battle has turned into a slog.
Even though 105,000 Americans died last year, Congress is showing little urgency about reupping the law since it expired on Sept. 30. That’s not because of partisan division, but a realization that there are no quick fixes a new law could bring to bear.
Yes, but the current state of crisis unfolded because pharma corps like Purdue lied about addictiveness thanks to the consult of such upstanding groups as McKinsey, and then the printed billions in cash for almost 2 decades while the top of the funnel of opiod users exploded. The bottom of the funnel, your meth, heroin and fentanyl ODs and related crimes are the cost of that years laters as addicts inevitably spiral downward. Pharma companies took what used to be an extreme and made it mainstream by hooking everyone from high school kids, to those injured at work on their products.