Little is known about the Trump administration's plan to end this public health epidemic of opioid abuse, apart from the creation of a Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. So far, the White House has only said that the commission will produce a report and look for federal funding mechanisms.

But that is not nearly enough.

At a time when opioid overdose deaths kill tens of thousands of Americans every year -- including more than 33,000 in 2015 -- we do not have the luxury of giving this commission months to rehash facts that experts, including the surgeon general and coalitions of doctors and public health experts, already agree upon.

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The opioid epidemic has ravaged families and communities across Maryland, claiming thousands of lives every year. In 2015, there were 1259 drug- and alcohol-related intoxication deaths. That number rose to 1,468 deaths on only the first nine months of 2016, according to the most recently available data.

Addiction and overdose are undoubtedly health issues, but for years, our efforts to curb drug use focused solely on the criminal justice side of the equation. As the heartbreaking numbers indicate, that alone is not enough. We must do more to save lives, improve access to on-demand treatment, and eliminate stigma about the disease. Only then will we be able to fully address this health crisis.

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You may have noticed over the past few days that we revealed a new Baltimore City Health Department logo. The logo change is part of a larger rebranding strategy to standardize our image across the entire agency.

Over the past six months, the communications team analyzed our internal and external documents as well as evaluated the core values of the agency. The result was a refined vision and mission statement grounded in equity, community, and wellbeing.