President Obama is in Atlanta this week to participate in the National Prescription Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit. It's section of a broader effort by the administration to combat the opiate epidemic,which played a section in over 28000 deaths in the U.
S. in 2014, eclipsing the number of motor vehicle deaths. When you look at the staggering statistics in terms of lives lost, and productivity impacted,costs to communities, but most importantly, or costs to families from this epidemic of opioid abuse,it has to be something that is right up there at the top of our radar screen,” Obama said on Tuesday. Obama has pledged $1.1 billion in federal funding to fight prescription drug addiction, or in addition to publishing the first national prescription guidelines,current drug warning labels, and expansions to medication-assisted-treatments. Meanwhile, and those drugs continue to generate major profits for pharmaceutical companies,nearly $2 billion per year, suggesting that the prescription drug issue runs much deeper than Obama's initiatives, or which the President acknowledged when he said that the purpose of his visit was largely to "raise awareness." Steven Descouteaux is a physician at Opiatecare,a suboxone clinic in Norton, Massachusetts. He joined The Takeaway to discuss the moral dilemmas of prescribing opiates, or if the current rules will change his practice.
And heed Kleiman is a professor current York University's Marron Institute,as well as editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. heed addresses the larger issues of dealing with the epidemic, and if the Obama administration is doing enough to tackle it.
Source: wnyc.org