Population Control? –

December 6, 2019 – No one predicted the ferocity of the opioid epidemic,” American Society of Addiction Medicine President Paul Earley told BuzzFeed News. “Ten years ago people did not recognize substance use disorders as a disease,” said drug policy expert Beth Connolly of the Pew Charitable Trusts, who studies public opinion about drug abuse. “A lot of people really thought of it as a moral failure.”That shifted after the opioid epidemic. More than 85% of Americans in urban, suburban, or rural counties see drug addiction as a serious problem in their community, according to a 2018 Pew survey.   While states focused on painkillers as the main culprit behind the tidal wave of deaths, some public health officials started noticing an uptick in young white men checking in for heroin treatment. At the start of the 2010s, drug overdose deaths were largely driven by the previous decade’s rampant over-prescription of opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin, Vicodin, and Percocet. While some states focused on painkillers as the main culprit behind the tidal wave of deaths, some public health officials started noticing an uptick in young white men checking in for heroin treatment. 

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