ການເສຍຊີວິດຂອງຢາ Opioid ອາດຈະສູງເຖິງ 165,000 ຄົນຕໍ່ປີໂດຍບໍ່ມີການແຊກແຊງ, Biden ເຕືອນຢ່າງເປັນທາງການ

Topline

The director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy warned that—without implementation of President Joe Biden’s intervention initiatives—opioid deaths could dramatically increase to about 165,000 annually by 2025.

ຂໍ້ເທັດຈິງສໍາຄັນ

Biden-nominated drug czar Dr. Rahul Gupta warned of the potential increase in opioid deaths at Politico’s Health Care Summit Wednesday, saying it’s crucial the administration continue to focus on addressing the opioid crisis as “there is almost no other area today (that) affects our public health, national security and economic prosperity.”

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated about 109,000 Americans died of a drug overdose; because the data is provisional, it’s unclear how many deaths were from or involved opioids.

If Biden’s proposed evidence-based policies—like funding treatment for people behind bars and expanding treatment available via telehealth—are implemented successfully, however, Gupta said the number of people dying from overdose deaths could be reduced by half instead of drastically increasing.

ຄວາມເປັນມາຫຼັກ

Drug overdose deaths have hit record highs in recent years, in large part due to the spread and wider availability of opioids, also known as narcotics. Opioids are widely used as painkillers to treat pain too severe for other drugs to alleviate, but they are highly addictive and can be abused both as a prescription medication and as a street drug. Heroin, morphine, opium, fentanyl, oxycodone (sold under brand names, including OxyContin), hydrocodone (brands include Vicodin), codeine and methadone are all examples of opioids. Data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse showed that in 2021, 80,411 died of an overdose involving an opioid—that number was up from around 10,000 in 1999. Addressing the increase in overdose deaths has been a prioritized issue for Biden, and the strategy he released in 2022 largely focused on expanding access to treatment and stopping drug trafficking. Some of the plan’s elements are being implemented over time, like ensuring that all federal prisons are able to offer medication for opioid addiction, while others have been launched, like his campaign to raise awareness about fentanyl’s and how Naloxone works.Last month, Biden also called on Congress to allocate $46 billion to National Drug Control Program agencies.

ກະທັດຮັດ

While Biden is making progress on some of the strategies outlined in his plan, he hasn’t followed through on all his opioid-related promises. When campaigning in 2020, Biden said he would hire an opioid crisis accountability coordinator who would support states litigating against pharmaceutical companies in spending their money, but Biden has not yet hired one despite settlement money arriving to state and local leaders, NPR reported. Even when the Biden Administration implemented a law to make it easier for doctors to prescribe a drug to treat opioid use disorder, doctors expressed frustration that the drug was under “such strict regulation that many are reluctant to dispense it,” leading them to feel that one of Biden’s latest attempts to address the crisis was a “paradox,” Politico reported.

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Overdoses are happening all around us, and frequently. At the summit, Gupta said that someone is dying from an overdose every five minutes in America.

ອ່ານ​ເພີ່ມ​ເຕີມ

Biden’s drug czar: 165,000 lives might be lost annually to the opioid crisis by 2025 (Politico)

Drug Overdose Death Rates | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)