[Editorial] Access to opioids: a balance of harms

Opioid overdose killed 64 070 Americans between 2016–17 to become the leading cause of mortality in the USA for people younger than 50 years. On March 29, 2017, US President Trump gave an executive order to investigate the crisis. The interim report called upon the US Administration to immediately increase capacity for addiction treatment through the removal of the Institutes for Mental Diseases exclusion from Medicaid funding. This recommendation is in stark contrast to this Administration's aim of cutting the government health budget, and Trump has refused to declare the current situation a national emergency, an action that would increase national impetus to act.

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