The opioid epidemic continues to ravage America

DURING THE past two decades opioids have become one of America’s worst public-health problems. The magnitude of abuse—spanning prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetics such as fentanyl—is staggering. In 2016 11m Americans mis-used prescription opioids, and 2.1m adults reported that they were addicted. In the year to September 2018 opioid overdoses killed 48,000 people. That took the total death toll since 2000 to 400,000, greater than the number of American combat deaths in the second world war, the Korean war and the Vietnam war combined.

On April 24th Donald Trump will make a speech to a group of health professionals and policymakers detailing his administration’s efforts to fight the “scourge” of opioid abuse. To his credit, Mr Trump did much to draw attention to the opioid epidemic when he was a presidential candidate. But in October 2017 the president meekly declared the epidemic a “national public-health emergency”, rather than invoking a formal “national emergency” as he had promised on the campaign trail (and as he did in an effort to get funding for a wall on America’s southern border). That delayed the federal government’s response. The White House reports that Mr Trump’s administration has so far spent or allocated just $1bn of federal money to tackle the crisis.