Raja Krishnamoorthi
Since the turn of the millennium, the United States has been ravaged by an opioid epidemic that has killed nearly one million Americans. At first, most of these victims died after overdosing on heroin or various prescription painkillers. But over the last five years, the deaths have been largely driven by a single, synthetic drug: fentanyl. Since finding its way into the illicit drug market, fentanyl has steadily crowded out other opioids, to the point that it is now responsible for most opioid poisonings. In 2023, for example, roughly 81,000 Americans died from opioids. Fentanyl caused nearly 75,000 of those deaths.
It is hard to overstate how deadly fentanyl is. The drug is more than 30 times as powerful as heroin, and so its spread has helped drive the number of opioid deaths to record highs. The human cost of the spike is visible to anyone who knows someone who overdosed, and to plenty of people who don’t. It was very apparent to me at a recent congressional hearing on this epidemic, where a packed auditorium of grieving families brought pictures of loved ones who had succumbed to fentanyl poisoning.
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