Everyone knows the opioid epidemic is a big issue, but nobody seems to grasp exactly how big it is. In 2016, the opioid crisis killed 64,000 people. That’s more Americans killed in a single year than in ten years of the Vietnam War (58,200, including all the accidents, illnesses, and suicides).
The opioid epidemic is like having had twenty-one 9/11 scale attacks last year, and then facing the same this year, and the government not responding. Sure, a billion dollars were promised in state block grants over two years, but compare that to our reaction to 9/11. We spent four trillion dollars on two wars, passed aggressive new anti-terrorism laws, and established a new cabinet level department… all in response to what in comparison was a tiny event.
Imagine if terrorists wiped out an American city the size of Topeka KS every two years. Well they don’t need to, our own government is doing that to us through inaction and political cowardice.
How can anything else be news when something this enormous is happening?
Looking at the news over the past several weeks, I can only conclude that we’ve become a nation addicted to bullshit. Sure, in normal times the President having an affair with a pornographic actress would be a scandal, but how does that even qualify as a scandal when the administration has no substantive proposals on the table to address twelve hundred Americans dying needlessly every week?