ONE OF THE BIGGEST ADVANCES in public health from the last few years is one that you’ve probably never heard about—and one that now may be in jeopardy thanks to the Trump administration.
I’m talking about a dramatic turnaround in America’s opioid crisis, the epidemic that began in the late 1990s with an explosion in the use of addictive prescription painkillers, and then got even worse with a surge in the use of heroin and its synthetic alternative, fentanyl. The effects have left families, communities, and in some cases whole regions of the country reeling, and more than 700,000 Americans dead from overdoses.