Brian Snyder/Reuters
AMERICA’S opioid crisis has spiralled further out of control. The latest figures reveal that more people in the US are dying from opioid overdoses than from motor vehicle accidents. The country’s life expectancy has dropped for the past two years running, thanks in part to drug overdose deaths.
“It is the highest level we’ve ever seen related to drug overdose deaths,” says Michael Botticelli, who served as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) under former President Barack Obama and now directs the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine in Boston. “It has surpassed the peak of HIV deaths and the peak of gun deaths,” he says. “To say it is the defining health crisis of our time is no exaggeration.”
In October last year, President Donald Trump acknowledged the scale of the crisis