Clinton tackles heroin addiction after voters raise issue on the campaign trail

Guess what? Candidates can actually learn something from talking to voters, and Hillary Clinton did. HuffPo reports:

After hearing story after story from voters on the campaign trail about heroin's toll, Hillary Clinton instructed her policy team to draw up solutions to the burgeoning opiate epidemic.

A Clinton aide told The Huffington Post that the Democratic presidential candidate decided to make mental health and drug addiction a major campaign issue after stops in Iowa and New Hampshire, where she kept hearing from people that the problem needs more attention. It's the type of issue that may not get much attention inside the Beltway and on Sunday talk shows, but opiate addiction has become a devastating problem.

Clinton brought it up on Monday during a stop in Iowa, telling supporters that she wants to "end the stigma against talking about it."

This is the goal of campaigning: candidates talking to real people and discovering issues they barely knew existed because no one in Washington is discussing them. But heroin addiction and overdoses are undoubtedly on the rise and not just in the big cities.

Developing a public policy around the scourge of addiction is a great issue for Democrats. No Republicans appear to be talking about it and it sits at the nexus of other important issues like health care and incarceration rates.  

Case in point—a Massachusetts police chief made news earlier this month by offering to put addicts who turn themselves in into detox programs rather than jailing them.