The most recent data on opioid overdoses and abuse are clear: At the national, metropolitan, and local levels, opioid addiction is a pervasive problem of the new century that harms our society and economy. Opioid overdoses are in fact, climbing up the ranks of the most clear and present disease dangers to our national health. Check out our blog post with local area interactive data through 2016.

This daunting issue has deep and often intractable physiological roots. It’s hard to break the addiction, and the collateral damage is vast, for children and for caregivers of those children, as well as for employers and our communities.

Evidence is mounting on groups that have at least partially enabled the epidemic: pharmaceutical firms and drugstores, to name just two. States increasingly are taking aim at executives and manufacturers, even locally.

So, what’s being done? Policy initiatives and interventions are building locally, with Cobb and Fulton as just two examples. And as many of us know, the President visited Atlanta last week to speak at a health care summit and renewed his pledge to fight this specific problem.

So opioids appear a clear and present danger to our national health, and it’s certainly not the first time that they have been. Just listen to this fascinating podcast from NPR profiling “the long history of opioid abuse in the U.S.”

For more information on other public health priorities, check out our recent Regional Snapshot.