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The opioid crisis in the U.S. shows no signs of slowing.
Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.
Next week the horror of heroin-opioid-related deaths will finally and formally be recognized as a national health emergency by President Donald Trump in response to the fact the families in the United States of America are losing more than 140 of their sons and daughters every day to drugs.
Cold statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reveal that heroin-opioid-related deaths are now the leading cause of death for adults under 50 years old.
This heroin-opioid plague has affected communities in all 50 states. The daily numbers of drug overdoses now far exceed gun deaths in America, that claim about 90 lives daily. Drugs and guns are a real epidemic gripping the nation.
“We have 142 people a day in this country dying of drug overdose. That means every three weeks we have a loss equal to the loss we had on 9/11,” said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who leads President Trump’s White House opioid commission that recommended the official declaration be made. “This is a national emergency.”
Some 64,000 people died in 2016 from heroin-opioid related overdoses, according to the CDC. Laws are being passed in some communities enabling drug overdoses to be investigated as a homicide leaving drug dealers charged with first-degree murder, a move that is long overdue.
The statistical increase in drug overdose deaths reported in 2016 compared to 2015 is the “largest annual jump ever recorded in the U.S. And all evidence suggests the problem is worsening in 2017. The death count is the latest consequence of an escalating public health crisis – opioid addiction.”
Two months ago President Trump said he was considering what series of events had to take place before he issues his emergency declaration. On Monday, the president said he would issue his order next week.
“The opioid crisis is an emergency. And I am saying officially right now: It is an emergency, it’s a national emergency,” said President Trump. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis.” The president also said the drug situation is a “serious problem the likes of which we have never had.”
The president’s official declaration of a public health crisis is no magic cure, but it will focus the nation’s attention on the problem like never before, and provide easier access to funding from the Public Health Emergency Fund and other sources.
Soon after taking office, President Trump established his drug task force – led by Christie – to bring recommendations to the president on how to better handle the drug problem in the U.S.. This commission issued the following statement released by the White House Press Office about how important it is to declare a national health emergency.
“It would also awaken every American to this simple fact: if this scourge has not found you or your family yet, without bold action by everyone, it soon will,” the commission said. “You, Mr. President, are the only person who can bring this type of intensity to the emergency, and we believe you have the will to do so and to do so immediately.”
As a father, who lost his 26-year-old son to a drug overdose two years ago, I remember finding him dead in his bed. The needle was there, so were little baggies with powder along with a lighter and a spoon. My son was gone before me. That’s not the natural order of life. His addictions proved fatal. Coady’s death ran over me like a freight train. Whoever provided my son with deadly illegal drugs is a murderer pure and simple.
President Trump must pull out all the stops and once and for all have a real ‘war on drugs’ and stop the drug trafficking by sealing the borders and increasing drug enforcement efforts to locate and arrest more drug dealers charging them with murder. This ‘war on drugs’ has been going on since the 1960s; and here we are with record-breaking deaths – the result of a truly ineffective war.
In the Philippines, their police nationwide – by presidential order — shoot drug dealers on sight right there on the streets. At last count, more than 7,000 drug-dealer killings have been reported in the Philippines in the past two years, but many of these shootings go unreported, according to news reports. As controversial as these killings are, it’s easy to understand the level of frustration over rampant illegal drugs and the harm they cause.
It’s been widely reported that the majority of heroin and other illegal opiates are smuggled into the U.S. from mainly Mexico and China, but other countries as well. Those congressional liberal Democrats and a few Republicans standing in the way of funding for President Trump’s Mexico-U.S. border wall are appalling. Many of them may be removed from office come the 2018 mid-term elections.
Big Pharma and the current health care system in America are also much to blame for these rising numbers of overdose deaths. For far too long the highly-addictive Oxycontin, a synthetic form of heroin prescribed for pain, has been over prescribed by doctors for years. Word gets out fast on the streets about what doctors are easy to get prescriptions from. These pills are sold on the streets for $10 to $20 each, but if they are not available — powerful street heroin is, and its strength is variable and unknown to users who can readily overdose in one session. But an addict will take the chance.
Somehow, someway this addiction cycle needs to be broken and be stopped in its tracks. Whose son or daughter will be among the 142 found dead today?
About the Author
Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.
Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.
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