So, exactly as you state, Peter, this is a public health emergency, an epidemic, and a danger to the safety and well being of the American public. It has mostly been perpetrated by large pharmaceutical companies and their making loads of these highly addictive drugs available to the public.

However, since there was a lot of money to be made doing this and the guys making this money wear suits and sit in board meetings and have highly paid lobbyists working their tails off and money flowing into the coffers of all kinds of politician's reelection war chests...well...nothing gets done.

The problem gets talked about but ignored and the SOLUTION offered is the same as the one dealing with our epidemic of gun violence.

Ignore the root cause...the over abundance and ease of access to guns or in this case highly addictive drugs...and focus instead on blaming the victims of these crises.

Continue to state things like:

"You would be less likely to die from gun violence IF you had a gun to shoot the person shooting at you!"

"You would not have a drug problem IF you made better choices about taking drugs."

So, the easy to spot similarity here is that the blame is squarely on the victims and the ones that end up dead. The problem with that is blaming the victims does not address the problem nor offer a solution to it.

So, when it comes to MONEY blame the victims because the victims have already lost. Create a dumb slogan like Nancy Reagan's "Just say no." or react to a school shooting by ending schools being gun free zones and giving guns to teachers, custodians, librarians...this puts the blame on the victims not on the people providing the guns or drugs that are killing them.

Here's something interesting. These types of blame the victim arguments actually appeal to religious people. They are specifically designed to do just that.

A popular conundrum that some religious people like to pose to get you to swing to their side is to say "Well, if you choose not to believe in god what if you are wrong? You would be better off believing because then if you are right and there is no god the outcome does not change. But if you choose not to believe and you are wrong and there is a god, you are screwed."

So, you are safer to "have a god and not need one" than to "not have a god and end up needing one."

Funny how that is also the gun argument as well "Better to have a gun and not need one than to not have one and need one."

Welcome to Blame the Victim 101. It is a very popular way to argue these points. It makes no sense and always does nothing to address what the actual issue is but that is also the point of doing it.

You will see "Blame the Victims" again and again and again in response to all sorts of issues. It works with drugs, guns, abortion and immigration, because what many people feel most comfortable with is putting the blame on somebody.

We have a section of the population that has been totally poisoned with this sort of thinking and sadly it seems really hard to move them out of it into a place where you actually address the issues.