What Trumps doing about opioids is worse than zero

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Police near Daytona Beach, Florida, recently came upon an SUV with the motor running and three little kids in the back. The parents were dead in front from a fentanyl overdose. The city of East Liverpool, Ohio, posted a shocking photograph of another dead overdosed couple, heads back and mouths open from a heroin overdose, a 4-year-old strapped in back. As its Facebook page explained, “It is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis.”

An opioid epidemic is upon us. In 2015, drug overdoses took an estimated 52,000 lives, about two-thirds of the cases tied to opioid abuse. Opioids are painkilling drugs. They include such prescription medications as Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet. Laws designed to tighten the abuse of the legal substances have driven addicts to switch to heroin and more deadly synthetic opioids.

President Trump pledged to end America’s “terrible drug epidemic.” What his administration has done about it so far is useless or worse.

I had to rub my eyes and check the wall calendar on reading that Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to revive the war against marijuana. Never mind that deaths from marijuana overdoses are virtually unheard of.

Sessions also vows to put more drug addicts behind bars for longer periods of time. This ignores a growing bipartisan movement to slow the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders. Many see it as pointless and a massive waste of money. Conservative lawmakers in Louisiana and Utah are helping lead the charge.

Enlightened police departments, meanwhile, are working to demilitarize their approach to drugs. In Seattle, for example, officers are giving users and low-level dealers a choice between joining a program and being arrested.

http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/harrop-what-trumps-doing-about-opioids-is-worse-than-zero/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=7a29f6e646-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-7a29f6e646-228635337

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. People who "count" can afford rehab.