35 ConsequencesofAddiction In 1971 President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one” and kickstarted the War on Drugs. Drug use, abuse, distribution and overdose were considered criminal acts punishable by jail time. Law enforcement and the judicial systemfoughtthewarondrugs,mostlyinurbanneighborhoods, attacking the symptoms of the problem, not the cause. Over time, through research and experience, criminalizing and punishing opioid drug users fell out of favor, as addiction is a disease, not a simple defiance of the law. While a person can still be criminally charged for drug possession, many defense attorneys argue their clients need treatment, not punishment. More judges support drug rehabilitation rather than incarceration as knowledge surrounding addiction to opiates created a sympathetic public more focused on recovery. However, that sympathy has not spread to drug dealers. In some states, dealers found to have sold a person a drug that caused their death can be charged with murder. Howdowefixit? In 2017, over 70,000 deaths in the U.S. were caused by drug overdoses, and healthcare practitioners and government officials have been slow to explore ways to effectively end the opioid epidemic. President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. The Commission will study ways to combat and treat the scourge of drug abuse, addiction and the opioid crisis. But it is the trial lawyers effectuating real change. Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed across the U.S. against opioid makers and distributors on behalf of state and local governments. These lawsuits have been compared to the lawsuits against Big Tobacco, when states sued en masse to hold tobacco companies accountable for billions of dollars in medical expenses and deaths attributable to smoking. According to the lawsuits, pharmaceutical companies enabled this epidemic through aggressive reckless marketing downplaying the addiction risk of opioids and misrepresenting the scientific literature. These legal challenges will likely lead to large settlements – economically quashing the medical and pharmaceutical practices causing the deadliest drug overdose crisis in U.S. history. The continued challenge will be to make sure we don’t return to the days when chronic pain wasn’t taken seriously as a medical problem and help address the consequences by funding more addiction treatment.