Action in Needed

In my fellow classmate and friend's blog, Living in a Red State, Lauren states that, "According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention more than 140 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. Today we call that an epidemic." I heartily agree with her that, "If the Just Say No campaign did not work why should the American public believe that declaring a public health emergency will. Because it is not good enough." She makes a great point that for an epidemic, this large. It is wiping out almost a whole generation of people. This has become a national emergency and we need to do more to fix the problem.

When the Trump administration launched an ad campaign trying to bring awareness to the detriment of drinking and doing drugs, they failed to make an impact. During Trump's speech, he had a similar position to another politician who suggested to, “Just say No”. Trump echos this with his, “don’t drink don’t drink”, something his alcoholic brother would tell him.  Like Lauren said, "It appears Trump wanted to create a show, some sort of temporary solution that creates a band-aid for addiction treatment. The funds allocated for Public Health Emergencies are almost gone and there are no new policies being put into place, so where is the real solution?"

She makes a strong argument by not only naming the problem, but naming a proper solution. She says that, "A possibility would be to make Naloxone, an anti-overdose drug, more available and allow insurance to cover more treatment costs so that people have an opportunity to go." I agree with her, that if we have an epidemic such as this, we need to treat it like one. We need to come up with a more substantial and more significant solution, because addiction is not to be taken lightly. Addictions are major battles that are incredibly difficult to fight. Addictions can drive people to do insane things, such as killing themselves. We need to stop losing people to something so dangerous.