[Daily Wire] As The Daily Wire reported, President Trump is currently drafting paperwork to declare the opioid epidemic a "national emergency."
Once upon a time, we considered drug abuse to be an underground issue impacting the dregs of society. "They" have a drug problem, we told ourselves. The "other," that faceless statistic we all heard about but never talked about in polite company, was beyond our help. Today, the opioid crisis is staring us in the face. It's inescapable. This is a full-scale epidemic affecting hardened criminals and unassuming housewives alike.
America’s opioid addiction is costing countless lives every day. But why? How did we get here? The fact is, we're here because we've done very little to address the problem.
Some have linked the uptick in opioid-related addiction to the recession, arguing that unemployment has bred a culture of despair in which drugs are sought as a refuge to blunt the pain of loss. Others place the blame on the astonishing accessibility of painkillers and other prescription drugs.
But the truth is, of course, more complicated than these reductive reasons imply. To understand opioid addiction, we first need to understand what the drug does and the effect it has on the brain. |