The opioid crisis: America’s other health horror
Over the last two decades, opioid addiction has been America’s single greatest public health threat. Now the corporations that masterminded the production and mass distribution of these highly addictive prescription painkillers are being held to account in a series of multibillion dollar settlement deals. But is it too little, too late?
When historians look back on the 21st century, the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 will be recorded as one of the United States’s deadliest, and worst-managed, public health crises. More than 600,000 Americans lost their lives to Covid-19 between the early spring of 2020 and the early summer of 2021. More than 35 million were diagnosed with the virus, millions of whom were hospitalised and continue to suffer long-term debilitating effects.
But the management of America’s ...
