A “mass casualty event” played out in slow motion

Opioids are killing more than 50,000 Americans a year, far more than the toll of the AIDS epidemic at its height, reported the Guardian.

President Trump is set to declare the opioid crisis a “national emergency,” reported the Washington Post. Trump telegraphed this when he recently told reporters that he would soon have a “major announcement” on the “massive opioid problem,” and people inside the White House are now leaking word that this announcement will herald an all-hands-on-deck push to combat the epidemic.

But members of Trump’s own handpicked commission to combat the epidemic aren’t nearly as confident, I’m told. They are increasingly worried that the Trump administration will not actually follow through with a robust response, even if he does go before the cameras and declare the crisis a national emergency, and they are increasingly annoyed by the efforts of people inside the administration who are resistant to such a response, one member of the commission says.

In a surprisingly blunt interview with me, Patrick Kennedy, the former congressman from Rhode Island who is a member of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, candidly described the mood on the commission as one racked by pessimism about the president’s willingness and ability to follow through with a response that matches the scale of the human disaster that has unfolded.

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