REDUCE THE COST OF BURIALS –

Feb. 8, 2022 – The pandemic has contributed to a surge in substance misuse including fatal overdoses. At least one in 10 Americans initiated or increased drug use amid rising anxiety, depression and trauma, and reduced access to services.

The social and psychological impact has been devastating, but economic costs are also high: drug overdoses cost the US economy about $1tn annually, the commission estimated.

“In terms of loss of life and damage to the economy, illicit synthetic opioids have the effect of a slow-motion weapon of mass destruction in pill form,” the 70-page report to Congress said.

The commission’s findings echo Joe Biden’s declaration last December that the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids constitutes a national emergency.

The report acknowledges that the crisis has its roots in an FDA decision to approve the highly addictive painkiller Oxycontin in 1995, fueling a rise in opioid addiction exploited by criminal gangs, at first with heroin but since 2014 with more profitable and deadly synthetics like fentanyl.

Amid inadequate prevention and drug treatment services, gangs have adapted fentanyl to American tastes by creating pills which for many are less stigmatised than snorting, injecting and smoking. It is of the “highest concern”, according to the commission, that most users are not at least initially seeking fentanyl, rather that it is laced into heroin and brand-name pills like Vicodin and Oxycontin, driving overdoses.

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