Editorial Board

America's Next Big Drug Problem

Doctors and lawmakers need to take benzodiazepines seriously, before it's too late.

Tranquilizer use is way up.

Photographer: BSIP/UIG via Getty Images

Imagine it were possible to return to the time before opioid use soared in the U.S. -- to the early 1990s, before so many doctors came to overprescribe Oxycontin, Vicodin and the like for every imaginable kind of pain; before millions became addicted; before prescription opioid users switched to heroin and deadly street fentanyl.

Back then, the crisis might have been nipped in the bud.