, Columnist
We're Losing the War on Opioids
In the absence of radical measures, the epidemic will take its course.
Hard to cure.
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America's opioid epidemic is getting worse. What's most depressing is that it's hard to imagine how anyone involved -- the addicts, the doctors, the drug companies or the government -- will do anything in time to mitigate it.
The newest data show that at least 64,000 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses in 2016. Of those, 20,000 involved fentanyl, the synthetic version of heroin. That's twice as many as in 2015 and more than five times as many as in 2013. It also exceeds the worst years for deaths to AIDS, car crashes and gun violence.