By Luis Mila

“You are, in my opinion, the worst sort of drug dealer. You poured thousands of prescription opiates into the streets, to people you knew weren’t taking them as prescribed.” says Judge Irene C. Berger to a defendant at his sentencing hearing in the West Virginia federal court.

The defendant, Dr. Michael Kostenko, was given a 20-year sentence for prescribing oxycodone to patients, whose health issues were not so dire as to prescribe such an intense, and heavy dosage of medicine, which was derived from opium.

According the New York Times, the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50, are drug overdoses. Dr. Kostenko’s case demonstrates the growing crisis of opioid overuse.

“The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I am saying, officially, right now, it is an emergency. It’s a national emergency. We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of money on the opioid crisis. It is a serious problem the likes of which we never had.” Trump declared on August 10th at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Contrary to Trump’s statement, this crisis began in the late 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies buoyed the American public to believe that opioids would not result in addiction, prompting medical professionals to prescribe heavier and more frequent dosages. Since 1999, the sales of prescription drugs has quadrupled.

Further statistics provided by the National Drug Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH), and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) add on to the severity of the opioid crisis. In 2015 alone, opioids caused a chain reaction of events that devastated its users: 12.5 million people have misused their prescribed medicine, 2 million had a disorder related to opioid addiction, 828,000 used heroin (another drug branching from opium), 15,281 deaths were caused by overdose, 9,580 deaths were caused by synthetics (such as fentanyl, a much more powerful, addictive, and dangerous variation of opioids), and 80% of heroin addicts in the U.S. had started their lifestyle due to their past of misused, prescribed opioids.

Now, 78 Americans die every day due to an opioid overdose, and there are over 200,000 cases of misuse each year. 

An immediate step has already been taken by the FDA to prevent further catastrophe in the United States. The FDA now makes it a requirement to include a boxed warning about the dire consequences of misuse, which can result in addiction, abuse, overdose, and death. This is to further educate patients, and prescribers about the risks related to opioids. Aside from this, further action is being discussed to eradicate the epidemic as a whole, mainly through multiple Departments, and White House officials.