Monday, October 17, 2016

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara: All Hands on Deck vs. the Opioid Crisis

 

The following op-ed by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was published in today's edition of the New York Daily News. 

The images are heartbreaking. A 2-year-old girl in pink pajamas tugs on her mother’s sleeve as she lies unresponsive in a supermarket aisle. Two parents come home after work and find their 22-year-old daughter on the floor face down, cold and blue. A couple overdoses in a car, engine still running, with their young son strapped helplessly to his car seat in the back.

These searing images drive home just how bad the opioid abuse epidemic has gotten.

And the statistics bear it out. Close to 80 Americans die from opioid overdoses every day: almost 550 a week, 2,400 a month, 30,000 a year. Thirty thousand lives cut short; 30,000 families devastated; 30,000 communities scarred, every year.

More Americans now die from overdoses than from car accidents or guns, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of overdose-related emergency room visits each year. 

Click here for the full article. 

Source: Provided by The Empire Report

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