The Wishful Thinking Solution To The Opioid Crisis

Ken AshfordDrug CrisisLeave a Comment

Call it Just-Say-No 2.00.  Trump declared a war on the opioid crisis:

President Trump on Thursday directed the Department of Health and Human Services to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency, taking long-anticipated action to address a rapidly escalating epidemic of drug use.

He didn’t fulfill his campaign promise of making it a “national emergency” because that would have real-world implications, like actually doing something about it. One thing is for sure: Trump’s directive does not on its own release any additional funds to deal with a drug crisis that claimed more than 59,000 lives in 2016, and Trump did not request any, although his aides said he would soon do so.  We’ll see.  Those kinds of things tend to get overlooked.