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Editorial: Heavy cost of opioid crisis shows White House must do more

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In 2012, dozens of people testified at a U.S. Food and Administration hearing about how over-the-counter naxolone would saves lives and reverse opioid overdoses. In 2014, then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called a spike in overdose deaths from heroin and prescription painkillers an “urgent health crisis.” In 2015, shocking research by Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton showed a huge surge in drug overdose deaths, with less educated middle-aged white Americans the most common fatalities.

Now the use of prescription painkillers, cheap illicit knock-off versions of the drugs and heroin is recognized as one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. — killing at least 33,000 people in 2015, more than double that year’s U.S. gun homicides.

But for all the attention the crisis has received, a series of reports suggests that the approach chosen by President Donald Trump — forming a presidential commission to address the issue in March and declaring a public health emergency in October, but providing no additional funding for new programs — is simply too limited.

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U.S. President Donald Trump declared the nation’s opioid crisis a public health emergency on Thursday, a move aimed at redirecting federal resources and loosening regulations to combat widespread abuse.

In July, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services researchers released a report showing opioid abuse involving prescription drugs was generally as prevalent in urban and suburban areas as in rural areas, showing the problem isn’t isolated to declining small towns and back-country areas. “What was once a rural epidemic is now a national one,” an analysis in The Washington Post noted.

In August, a study released by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found opioid and heroin deaths in 2014 to be much higher — 24 percent and 22 percent, respectively — than thought.

Then, on Monday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report saying the overall cost of opioid abuse, dependence and deaths in 2015 was $504 billion — vastly higher than previous estimates. The stunning estimate was based on how much the epidemic had increased spending on health care and criminal justice, as well as its effects on workplace productivity.

These findings translate into massive human misery. It’s all well and good that President Trump ordered affected federal agencies to take emergency steps to address the opioid epidemic, gave governors more freedom to use federal grants as they see fit to address the crisis and loosened rules on telemedicine to improve treatment for addicts in isolated areas with little access to health care.

But that isn’t enough. A far more comprehensive approach is needed. One obvious step would be to provide law enforcement officers and other first responders with naloxone. A second crucial step would be to get American physicians to be much more aware of the risks they create by prescribing opioids in pain treatment so readily. Nearly 30 percent of the population — an estimated 92 million Americans — were prescribed opioids in 2015. On a per-capita basis, opioids were prescribed in the U.S. six times as much as in France and four times as much as in Great Britain, Spain and Norway. No other nation is close, according to a U.N. report. A third essential step would be to be establish outreach and treatment programs using best-practices models to help health-care professionals who work with people addicted to painkillers.

While a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to end the opioid epidemic, calling it a crisis that is “poisoning” people. What he has done so far doesn’t live up to his rhetoric. Now that his White House advisers have framed the epidemic as an economic catastrophe — as damaging as nearly five Hurricane Harveys — perhaps the president will show more urgency while addressing the opioid scourge.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion

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