In Our view: Do More to Curb Opioids

The opioid crisis facing the United States is dire.

“With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to Sept. 11 every three weeks,” notes a preliminary report from a panel formed by President Donald Trump to study the situation. That reality hits home in the Northwest, with Attorney General Bob Ferguson saying in June, “We have a huge, huge problem in Washington. We have two people each day die of an overdose of opioids.”

Yet with the abuse of both prescription and illicit drugs affecting families, the reality is butting up against ideology in Washington, D.C. While the federal panel led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recommends that Trump declare a national emergency and that Medicaid spending be increased, Republicans are attempting to slash such spending. Threats to trim Medicaid or repeal the Affordable Care Act run counter to Trump’s promises to deal with the nation’s opioid crisis, but the lesson is clear: Cutting funding will have a profound cost.

For many, that is a cost they are willing to bear. Critics of spending on treatment often claim that addicts have brought the crisis upon themselves and that the public should not be burdened to pay for those actions. As a Missouri state senator callously said, when somebody dies of an overdose, that “just removes them from the gene pool.” Such opinions ignore the societal costs that accompany the crisis. In addition to delivering suffering upon American families, addiction also leads to increased crime and diminishes the vibrancy of our communities.

In this state, Gov. Jay Inslee last year used an executive order to bring together state agencies, public health organizations and law enforcement to combat the epidemic. This year, Inslee signed a bill designed to improve communication between medical providers regarding prescriptions and overdoses. The bill, which passed the Senate 49-0 and passed the House 88-8, provides a little more than $1 million in funding for the program.

Nationally, however, experts say that tens of billions of dollars are needed to fight the nation’s opioid crisis. “This is not a natural disaster; it’s one caused by overprescription of opiates and flooding of illegal opiates into the country,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Obama administration. “The critical measures for reversing the opioid epidemic are improving prescribing and increasing interdiction of illicit opioids.”

The genesis of the crisis can be traced to the 1990s, when doctors became increasingly aware of the burdens of chronic pain in patients. That led to an increase of prescriptions for pain medication, and a report from the Centers for Disease Control found that “in 2015, the amount of opioids prescribed was enough for every American to be medicated around the clock for three weeks.” When this was combined with an influx of illicit drugs, particularly heroin and fentanyl, an epidemic was born.

So far, this has not been enough to seize the attention of Congress, which demonstrates the importance of the panel formed by President Trump. In urging the declaration of a national emergency, the panel wrote, “Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the executive branch even further to deal with this loss of life.”

In 2015, drug overdoses killed more Americans than car crashes or gun violence. That is a dire reality that no longer can be ignored.