CHERRY HILL, N.J. — The federal government will spend a record $4.6 billion this year to fight the nation’s deepening opioid crisis, which killed 42,000 Americans in 2016. “We still have lacked the insight that this is a crisis, a cataclysmic crisis,” he said. States also have begun putting money toward the opioid epidemic. The federal spending plan also incorporates language inspired by the 2016 death of a 30-year-old woman, who overdosed on pain pills she was prescribed as she left a hospital following surgery. Under the law, federal authorities are encouraged to establish procedures for health care providers to share information about addiction histories.

Source: National Post March 25, 2018 14:16 UTC