Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Inside a Killer Drug Epidemic: A Look at America’s Opioid Crisis



The opioid epidemic killed more than 33,000 people in 2015. What follows are stories of a national affliction that has swept the country, from cities on the West Coast to bedroom communities in the Northeast.

JAN. 6, 2017

Opioid addiction is America’s 50-state epidemic. It courses along Interstate highways in the form of cheap smuggled heroin, and flows out of “pill mill” clinics where pain medicine is handed out like candy. It has ripped through New England towns, where people overdose in the aisles of dollar stores, and it has ravaged coal country, where addicts speed-dial the sole doctor in town licensed to prescribe a medication.

Public health officials have called the current opioid epidemic the worst drug crisis in American history, killing more than 33,000 people .. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm655051e1.htm?s_cid=mm655051e1_w .. in 2015. Overdose deaths were nearly equal to the number of deaths from car crashes. In 2015, for the first time, deaths from heroin alone surpassed gun homicides .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/08/heroin-deaths-surpass-gun-homicides-for-the-first-time-cdc-data-show/?utm_term=.f254cf450cc9 .

And there’s no sign it’s letting up, a team of New York Times reporters found as they examined the epidemic on the ground .. http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/has-opioid-abuse-affected-you-readers-respond.html .. in states across the country. From New England to “safe injection” areas in the Pacific Northwest, communities are searching for a way out of a problem that can feel inescapable.

HERE ARE THEIR STORIES

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/opioid-crisis-epidemic.html?_r=1

"Senate health-care bill faces serious resistance from GOP moderates"
[...]
"Shatterproof, a national nonprofit organization focused on addressing addiction, estimates that 2.8 million people have gained access to substance-abuse treatment under Medicaid expansion. In Ohio alone, total federal funding provided 70 percent of the $939 million that the state spent to combat the epidemic last year.

Capito and Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) have asked the chamber’s Republican leaders to provide in the bill $45 billion over 10 years to address opioids; the measure currently provides $2 billion. But that amount, Shatterproof chief executive Gary Mendell said Friday, is less than a tenth of what experts predict will be needed over the next decade. And providing a designated fund while leaving millions uninsured makes little sense, he added."

.. of course as in so many areas money and focus should also be targeted at causes more and more, as should always have been the case before .. at efforts to avoid the problems .. how does Trump address causes of self-abuse, well, he tweets himself pretending to beat up a doctored image purporting to be of CNN reporter .. he encourages violence against others, while ignoring the cruelty he himself exudes .. and his supporters lap it up, as they yearn for genuineness, and that's who he genuinely is ..

See also:

Malcolm Gladwell: People shouldn’t be shocked that Trump is ‘being who he is’
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=132699751

"GOP's Health Care Plan" is an oncoming catastrophe
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=131324227

Ethics watchdog at Justice Department resigns over Trump's corruption
[...]
I believe it has never been more important for every individual to speak and act on their conscience and belief.
Amen, sister.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=132699575