“The single most important tool for escaping the opioid crisis right now is access to addiction treatment,” Holton continued. “If President Trump is serious about the opioid crisis, I urge the president to promise to veto any health care bill that strips Americans of insurance coverage for addiction.”
No community is exempt from the prescription drug abuse crisis. “It’s not hard to understand why when you look at how many people have access to pain medications,” says Holton. “We sell in Oregon every year 220 million opioid pills; that’s 50 for every man, woman and child.” In 2015, 331 Oregonians died from prescription opioid overdose.