Dr Robert Redfield Jr took over as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week and pledged to bring the opioid epidemic 'to its knees'The new director of the top public health agency in the US has pledged to bring the opioid epidemic 'to its knees'. President Trump formally declared the opioid crisis a 'public health emergency' in October but stopped short of allocating more resources to address it. Addiction treatment programs are largely run on the state level but rely heavily on federal funding. In 2016 opioid overdose deaths jumped to 64,000, causing US life expectancy to drop for the second year in a row for the first time since the 1960s. It's great that he convened a task force so we have another paper that says the opioid crisis in America needs attention.

Source: Daily Mail March 30, 2018 20:48 UTC