America’s opioid crisis is a result of numerous factors. Yes, those who become embroiled in addiction to prescription drugs deserve some of the blame. But so do breakdowns in governmental oversight and regulation, along with pharmaceutical companies that have demonstrated more interest in moving their product than protecting the health of the public.
Last month, Washington and the city of Seattle followed numerous government entities across the country in suing opioid makers and trying to hold them accountable for the costs of responding to drug addiction. While the damage done to individuals and families is difficult to quantify, officials are wise to seek remunerations for emergency, criminal justice and social services expenditures.
Those costs gained clarity in recent weeks, with insightful reports from The Washington Post and CBS News detailing the manner in which a crisis can blossom. In 2014, the pharmaceutical industry launched an attempt to slow efforts by the Drug Enforcement Agency in cracking down on questionable shipments of prescription drugs. Legislation limiting those efforts passed Congress and was signed by President Barack Obama, reflecting a lack of scrutiny in Washington, D.C.
That has tied the hands of drug enforcement and allowed a problem to become a crisis. The Washington Post reported that over a five-year period, one midsize distributor of prescription drugs shipped 20 million doses of opioids to pharmacies in West Virginia; one county, with a population of 25,000, received 11 million doses. As Keith Humphrey, a drug policy expert at Stanford University, explains: “Consider the amount of standard daily doses of opioids consumed in Japan. And then double it. And then double it again. And then double it again. And then double it again. And then double it a fifth time. That would make Japan No. 2 in the world, behind the United States.”
