How Not to Handle the Opioid Crisis

President Donald Trump announced this month that he intends to formally declare a state of emergency regarding America’s opioid crises, which a White House advisory panel told him has reached unprecedented, catastrophic proportions. Many Americans eye Trump’s pronouncements warily, as they usually begin by stating a problem most of us agree is genuine and then swiftly veer into wild territory that seems to pop out of the president’s fertile imagination.

So here, Mr. President, are some basic solutions to the opioid crisis. Your advisory commission gave you many sage recommendations, which you should seriously weigh. Your Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis was especially focused on preventing overdose deaths and helping people get off narcotics. But when you announced your intention to follow the commission’s primary recommendation by declaring an emergency, you added(from your vacation in Bedminster, New Jersey), “The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place.… So we can keep them from going on, and maybe by talking to youth and telling them: ‘No good, really bad for you in every way.’”