Posted on: May 02, 2019
The most recent data on opioid overdoses and abuse are clear: At the national (external link), metropolitan (external link), and local (external link) levels, opioid addiction is a pervasive problem of the new century that harms our society and economy. Opioid overdoses are in fact, climbing up the ranks (external link) of the most clear and present disease dangers to our national health. Check out our blog post with local area interactive data through 2016.
This daunting issue has deep and often intractable physiological roots. (external link) It’s hard to break the addiction, and the collateral damage (external link) is vast, for children (external link) and for caregivers (external link) of those children, as well as for employers and our communities.
Evidence is mounting on groups that have at least partially enabled the epidemic: pharmaceutical firms (external link) and drugstores (external link), to name just two. States increasingly are taking aim at executives and manufacturers (external link), even locally (external link).
So, what’s being done? Policy initiatives and interventions are building locally, with Cobb (external link) and Fulton (external link) as just two examples. And as many of us know, the President visited Atlanta last week to speak at a health care summit and renewed his pledge to fight (external link) this specific problem.
So opioids appear a clear and present danger to our national health, and it’s certainly not the first time that they have been. Just listen to this fascinating podcast from NPR (external link) profiling "the long history of opioid abuse in the U.S."
For more information on other public health priorities, check out our recent Regional Snapshot.
