Kim Grajcar of West Palm Beach holds a photo of her daughter Samantha, who died of a heroin overdose.
CreditBruce R. Bennett/Palm Beach Post/ZUMA

Each year, more than 40,000 Americans die from drug overdoses. (emphasis added) That’s on par with the annual death toll from HIV/AIDS at the peak of the US epidemic, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and far more than are killed each year from car accidents or gun violence. More than half of those overdose deaths involved opioids, a class of drugs including heroin, Vicodin, OxyContin, and fentanyl.

So dire is the epidemic of opioid addiction that it inspired a rare moment of political bipartisanship earlier this year, when Congress passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act to increase accessibility to addiction medications and the overdose reversal drug naloxone. Democrats tried to include $920 million in treatment funding, but Republicans blocked the move, […]