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The Daily Signal
Getting the
Opioid Epidemic Right
William Bennett
June 29, 2017
The numbers are staggering. Until about a month ago, we had thought
drug overdoses were responsible for some 52,000 American lives in 2015.
Now the most recent reporting reveals that number may be closer to
60,000 in 2016.
Think about that: We could now build the equivalent of one Vietnam
Memorial Wall a year given the carnage we are wreaking on ourselves
with drug abuse.
The majority of these drug overdoses are opioid-related, and there has
been a fair amount of reporting on them. But, given the rising death
toll—much greater than the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s—not
nearly enough. And not nearly enough has been said by our political or
cultural leaders. When it is discussed, too often the narrative is
wrong and the solutions too singularly focused.
First, our political, journalist, and cultural leadership must get the
cause of the opioid epidemic right. Most write and speak about
prescription drug abuse. That is a big problem, but it is not the only
problem, nor is it the part of the opioid epidemic that is exploding
today.
Of course we must police pill mills, we must train physicians better on
the risks of overprescribing, and we must have state medical boards
become more aggressive in policing the unscrupulous.
But the near-exclusive attention on the medical and prescribing part of
opioids is insufficient.
For example, nearly 70 percent of our nation’s opioid deaths do not
come via prescription abuse. In 2015, there were 33,091 opioid overdose
deaths. Heroin deaths constituted 12,990 of those deaths. Synthetic
opioids (mostly illegal fentanyl) constituted another 9,580 deaths.
The main problem today, and the growth for tomorrow, is illegal opioids
such as heroin, illegal fentanyl, and a hundred other synthetics, not
legal drugs used illegally or in ways not as prescribed.
If we are going to tackle the opioid issue head-on, we must take
illegal drugs head-on, with strategies aimed at better border
enforcement, better monitoring of international mail services, and a
crackdown on cartel activity, both here in America and in source
countries.
Second, most of the talk and money spent on our current crisis is on
treatment, recovery, and urgent overdose reversal. All are important.
But simply improving access to treatment is not enough. We need to
improve engagement in treatment, reduce dropout, and address the far
too common outcome of relapse with sustained recovery—meaning no use of
alcohol, marijuana, or other drugs.
But the main unaddressed nature of the opioid crisis is focus and
energy on prevention.
Unlike many other chronic diseases, addiction is entirely preventable.
Too few are talking about or spending time on stopping the problem
before it starts. We must save every life we can, but to focus
exclusively on treatment and recovery at the expense of prevention is
like building prosthetic limb stores on shark-infested beachfronts. We
need to warn people not to swim in those waters and we need to kill the
predatory sharks.
We need look only to the recent past as a guide for today. We had major
drug problems in this country in the late 1970s and 1980s. The nation
rolled up its sleeves, went to work, talked about it, taught about it,
and reversed it—and by 1992 we had cut drug use in half, and even more
in some age groups.
But it took a national, kitchen sink strategy: Hollywood got involved,
professional athletics got involved, and even presidents talked about
it and gave speeches on it. Law enforcement was key, but so was direct
messaging to the public at large.
That means getting serious about the goal for youth of no use of
alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or other drugs. That is where 90 percent
of addiction starts. This clear prevention message needs to come from
parents, educators, political leaders, the entertainment industry, and
health care professionals—just as in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
So let’s get the problem right and let’s get the solution right. In
addition to our focus on recovery outcomes, we must work to dissuade
people from taking illegal drugs or diverting legal drugs illegally in
the first place.
We must also work on Mexico eliminating its poppy crops and drug
cartels. We must go after them here, and hard, as well. And as we
educate the public about what is in their medicine cabinets, we must
also educate about how serious and dangerous are the drugs that are not
given to us by our doctors but bought and sold on the street.
In sum, let us commence a strategy to stop the problems of abuse before
they start. It will take a nationwide effort, from the president’s
bully pulpit down to local community messaging. It worked before and we
see no reason why it cannot work again. The carnage, at this point, is
too great not to try.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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