Aug 14, 2017 3 min read

Our leaders in Washington, D.C. have awoken to the catastrophic opioid crisis that has enveloped our region and nation.

There are now a number of proposals and ideas being suggested in a much-needed effort to combat an incredibly complicated issue that continues to ravage people of all ages, races and genders. But, as expected when it comes to any major issue at the federal level, there are many different opinions on how to achieve the stated goal of reducing drug use and overdoses.

A bill sponsored by Congressman Tim Murphy that would give doctors more access to a patients’ drug abuse history is getting a lot of attention and praise by his colleagues.

In fact, it was even cited in a 10-page report presented last month by President Trump’s newly-minted Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. More on that commission later.

Murphy’s Overdose Prevention and Patient Safety Act is now weaving its way through the legislative process and is on a similar track as the U.S. Senate’s version known as “Jessie’s Law.”

In these proposals, knowledge is power for doctors when prescribing pain medication to recovering addicts. Currently, doctors can only review past drug history with the patient’s written consent.

That’s just one small facet to a complicated problem that defies simple solutions.

The president’s new commission studying the opioid epidemic has much broader and far-reaching discussions bubbling up to the surface as the drug problem comes out from the shadows and into the public light.

Quite possibly the most important suggestion made by the commission was urging the president to declare the situation a national emergency. Anyone around this area knows what the rest of the country is finally figuring out.

An average of 142 Americans die every day from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not only is the loss of life is staggering, but the crime that comes with the opioid crisis is becoming an economic drag.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who chairs the commission, wrote in its report released earlier this month that the president’s “declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the executive branch even further to deal with this loss of life.”

At first, Trump declined to go so far as to formally declare it the national emergency it has become.

The president suggested last Tuesday that he favors a “law-and-order” approach to the problem. His point is that if police officers stop people from becoming addicted to drugs in the first place, the opioid crisis will wind down.

That makes sense, but the problem is complicated by the rush of pain medication to the market and doctors’ willingness to prescribe them. And what happens to the millions of people already hooked on pain meds or heroin?

Fortunately, Trump eventually reversed course and called it what we all already know it is, which will now open the floodgates for more federal funding.

We are in a crisis right now and need more robust treatment options to wean people off these addictive drugs.

We can’t just arrest our way out of this issue. The first “War on Drugs” didn’t work, and the current situation is too important for us to re-run the failed policies of the 1980s.