From Punishing Users to Treating a Disease (U.S. News & World Report)
Thursday May 18th, 2017
Second of three parts. Read part one: A Personal Look at a National Problem.
Opioid addiction takes a personal toll, but it also has countrywide consequences.
On an average day in the U.S., someone begins nonmedical use of opioids every 22 seconds; someone starts using heroin every two and a half minutes; and someone dies from opioid-related overdose every 16 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fatal accidents involving both legal and illegal prescription drugs surpassed those involving alcohol in 2015, a new Governors Highway Safety Association study finds. And, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 46.3 percent of federal inmates across the United States are serving time for drug-related offenses.
Opioid abuse has skyrocketed in the last 15 years, and the U.S. government has started to change its approach to the problem, transitioning from a "war on drugs" mentality that pegged users as criminals to efforts to treat people as victims suffering from a disease – a move that many think comes down to black vs. white.