In recent months companies at the center of the Opioid Crisis have been fighting in court about the roles they played in the epidemic that has affected millions of Americans. The over prescription of highly addictive drugs has had severe impacts on families, businesses, and the economy. (1) But the Opioid Crisis is only part of a much larger problem facing American Society.
In March of 2017 a landmark study was released connecting opioid abuse, financial insecurity, and death rates in the United States. The information is sobering and should be the focus of policy changes at all levels of government.
A recent study by Princeton Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton titled, “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century,” shows the connection between the rising mortality rates of the middle class in the US and “a measurable deterioration in economic and social wellbeing”. (2)
This deterioration has not suddenly developed. Rather, “Case and Deaton document an accumulation of pain, distress, and social dysfunction in the lives of working class whites that took hold as the blue-collar economic heyday of the early 1970s ended, and continued through the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent slow recovery.”
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