The Opioid crisis brought about with the approval of lawmakers voted to those high offices ...

from where they can pocket the most from pharmas and do the most harm to their voters.
Sadly, the crisis has also reached Canada just like all bad things from down south get to our shores.
Below are some articles on the crisis.
 
 Opioid Crisis
Every day, more than 90 Americans die after overdosing on opioids.1 The misuse of and addiction to opioids—including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl—is a serious national crisis that affects public health as well as social and economic welfare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the total "economic burden" of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.2
How did this happen?

In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers, and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates. This subsequently led to widespread diversion and misuse of these medications before it became clear that these medications could indeed be highly addictive.3,4 Opioid overdose rates began to increase. In 2015, more than 33,000 Americans died as a result of an opioid overdose, including prescription opioids, heroin, and illicitly manufactured fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.1 That same year, an estimated 2 million people in the United States suffered from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers, and 591,000 suffered from a heroin use disorder (not mutually exclusive).5 Here is what we know about the opioid crisis:.......

Opioid crisis: It’s killing young people at an alarming rate
A West Goshen police officer recently saved the life of a 26-year-old woman by using Narcan, an FDA-approved nasal spray used to treat opioid overdose. For police departments in Chester County and throughout the tri-county region, it’s a common occurrence.

Hundreds of lives have been saved by Narcan, also known as naloxone, since it has been put to use by municipal and state police in Berks, Chester and Montgomery counties.

Incredibly, for Americans under 50, the leading cause of death used to be injuries caused by accidents. Now, it’s drug overdoses.

“It has really gotten bad,” said Patricia Allen, a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and executive director of Medical Services for Summit Behavioral Health. “There’s an epidemic of drug-related overdoses here now.”