Stephan:   Cable news and newspapers report more and more stories about the misery and death caused by the opioid crisis or epidemic, whichever you choose to call it, and the damage it is wreaking on American society.  The United States has allowed a legal formalized addictive drug distribution network to be created, even though by 2015 it was killing 33,000 people a year, about the same as guns and traffic driving fatalities. Tobacco, alcohol, and prescribed opioids are now the country’s three main killers.[i] Don’t you find it interesting that all three of them are legal, and that one, the opioid crisis we now face, was created before our eyes within the working lifetime of a single physician? In the face of this crisis what is the response of the Republican Party and the Trump Administration? Here is the answer if you can believe it. [i] Chen H, ; Hedegaard H, and Warner Margaret. Drug-poisoning Deaths Involving Opioid Analgesics: United States, 1999–2011. NCHS Data Brief 166, September 2014. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db166.htm. Accessed: 6 April 2017.