This estimate says opioid related deaths could potentially reach 500,000 over the next 10 years

Opioids could kill nearly half a million people across America over the next decade as the crisis of addiction and overdose accelerates.

Deaths from opioids have been rising sharply for years, and drug overdoses already kill more Americans under age 50 than anything else. STAT asked leading public health experts at 10 universities to forecast the arc of the epidemic over the next decade. The consensus: It will get worse before it gets better.

There are now nearly 100 deaths a day from opioids, a swath of destruction that runs from tony New England suburbs to the farm country of California, from the beach towns of Florida to the Appalachian foothills.

Turtleneck wrote:Good question. I am not sure this administration is going to let that happen - at least with Sessions as AG - but something obviously has to be done.

InTenSity wrote:

Turtleneck wrote:Good question. I am not sure this administration is going to let that happen - at least with Sessions as AG - but something obviously has to be done.

Lock em up. If they have kids, kick em to the curb. They made these bad horrible decisions, and now must live with teh consequences. Just a burden on the honest working man.

Turtleneck wrote:

InTenSity wrote:
Lock em up. If they have kids, kick em to the curb. They made these bad horrible decisions, and now must live with teh consequences. Just a burden on the honest working man.

In the late 70s and 80s that was the solution. Now that a drug epidemic has reached the suburbs and rural America, the preferred approach is treatment rather than prison.

DWags wrote:

InTenSity wrote:
I say cut all funding to everything, and let them deal with it. That's the current experiment, right?

Just use all tax money for the military. Just blow shit up.

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:You guys are all super stupid. Everyone already knows that Jared Kuschner is gonna fix it.

GRR Spartan wrote:Count on the Trump 5 member select task force to deal with it. Named 90 days ago and Trump said they'd be having a report of possible actions in that 90 day window. That's today. No report and they met once, only meeting 2 weeks ago.

Turtleneck wrote:

InTenSity wrote:
Lock em up. If they have kids, kick em to the curb. They made these bad horrible decisions, and now must live with teh consequences. Just a burden on the honest working man.

In the late 70s and 80s that was the solution. Now that a drug epidemic has reached the suburbs and rural America, the preferred approach is treatment rather than prison.

LooseGoose wrote:

Turtleneck wrote:

In the late 70s and 80s that was the solution. Now that a drug epidemic has reached the suburbs and rural America, the preferred approach is treatment rather than prison.

Pfffffffft. I'll bet a larger percentage of HS students were stoners in the 70s than over the last 20 years. I would guess that 10-20% of our HS smoked daily/weekly and it was rural as hell.

Most major researchers believe that source, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, vastly understates the increase in heroin use. But many rely on the survey anyway for a simple reason: It’s the best data they have. Several other sources that researchers once relied on are no longer being updated or have become more difficult to access. The lack of data means researchers, policymakers and public health workers are facing the worst U.S. drug epidemic in a generation without essential information about the nature of the problem or its scale.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — After three defendants fatally overdosed in a single week last year, it became clear that Buffalo's ordinary drug treatment court was no match for the heroin and painkiller crisis.

Now the city is experimenting with the nation's first opioid crisis intervention court, which can get users into treatment within hours of their arrest instead of days, requires them to check in with a judge every day for a month instead of once a week, and puts them on strict curfews. Administering justice takes a back seat to the overarching goal of simply keeping defendants alive.