Michigan, indeed, our entire country, has been in the throes of the worst national drug epidemic in North America. American deaths attributed to opiates and fentanyl have outpaced the mortality rates experienced in every war since World War II combined and continue to climb annually.
Politicians and policymakers have been largely befuddled on how best to address this disease, which largely originated from legal pharmaceuticals and has since been exacerbated by the sharp increase in cheap heroin and deadly illicitly manufactured fentanyl.
No other nation in the world is being confronted with such a deadly health crisis. The costs of this epidemic has been estimated by economists to be as high as $1.5 trillion dollars. These costs are attributable to (A) lost productivity to employers, (B) vanished tax revenues to state and local governments, (C) medical interventions for these patients (particularly in our emergency rooms) and (D) increased costs related to growing criminal justice interventions.