The President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis: Origins and Recommendations

Abstract

The United States has the ignominious distinction of leading the world in opioid prescribing,¹ and in opioid-related overdose deaths. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that over 40,000 people died of an opioid-related overdose, with fentanyl-related deaths exceeding those of heroin or prescription opioids.² Opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of unintentional deaths in the US and of declining lifespan expectancies.³ With a worsening crisis, agencies of the US government and others produced an array of reports on the opioid crisis. Yet the death rate escalated further from 2010 to the present.