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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released drug overdose statistics for 2018, and they are shocking. Of the estimated 47,000 deaths from opioids last year, roughly two-thirds involved potent synthetic opioids, most of them fentanyl. America’s fentanyl problem is far deadlier than past crises with other illegal drugs. It also has a fundamentally different character. For most victims, fentanyl was not their drug of choice. Rather, they were poisoned by dealers who mixed it into baggies of heroin or pressed into fake-opioid tablets. (Bryce Pardo, Jonathan P. Caulkins and Beau Kilmer, 9/1)

Every child has a right to housing, food and medicine. As physicians and humanists, we affirm this fundamental principle. By targeting our nation’s residents who access publicly funded programs to provide for these basic needs, the Department of Homeland Security’s final rule on public charge — set to take effect this October — is a direct threat to the health of our most vulnerable neighbors. As pediatricians practicing in New York City’s diverse Washington Heights neighborhood, we condemn this rule and applaud the efforts of states throughout the nation that have filed lawsuits to block the rule. (Avital Fischer, Sumeet Banker and Claire Abraham, 9/1)

As voters fume about the high cost of health care, politicians have been targeting two well-deserved villains: pharmaceutical companies, whose prices have risen more than inflation, and insurers, who pay their executives millions in salaries while raising premiums and deductibles. But while the Democratic presidential candidates have devoted copious airtime to debating health care, many of the country’s leading health policy experts have wondered why they have given a total pass to arguably a primary culprit behind runaway medical inflation: America’s hospitals. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 9/1)

The endgame may be at hand for massive litigation pitting major pharmaceutical-makers against thousands of states, municipalities, tribes and other plaintiffs seeking accountability and compensation for the epidemic of prescription opioid overdoses that has ravaged the United States over the past two decades. An Oklahoma judge has held Johnson & Johnson liable for that state’s opioid problems, imposing a $527 million penalty. And Purdue Pharma, widely blamed for triggering overprescription of the OxyContin opioid through allegedly misleading marketing, is in talks to settle the cases for up to $12 billion. (9/2)

Are pro-lifers in bed with white supremacists? That’s Marissa Brostoff ’s contention in a Washington Post op-ed last week, wherein she alleged that “antiabortion politics” can provide “cover for white nationalist sentiments.” Her argument followed a Laurence Tribe tweet in which the Harvard law professor told his followers, “Never underestimate the way these issues and agendas are linked.” The timing is likely not accidental. The hope may be that tarring pro-lifers with white nationalism will distract attention from the agenda the Democrats have rallied around as they head into 2020. (William McGurn, 9/2)

The eugenic movement spearheaded by Francis Galton in England in the late Victorian period reached a culmination in the view that if you got rid of the misfits, you could breed a pure, advantaged race. The reach of the movement was reflected in the American campaigns to sterilize disabled people, supported in a 1927 Supreme Court decision in which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” (Andrew Solomon, 9/2)

Recently, the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams sounded the alarm on cannabis. There is nothing novel or altogether objectionable about the nation’s top public health official speaking out in an effort to discourage cannabis use, especially among young people and other potential higher-risk populations. However, the Surgeon General’s campaign launch emphasized a variety of questionable and inaccurate claims that not only undermine his credibility but also his cause. (Paul Armentano, 9/2)

“If time were short, where would you want to be?” As a palliative care physician, I regularly ask my patients, or their family members, where they want to die. The specific language I use depends on what they know, what they want to know and how they process information, but the basic premise is the same. Having asked this of hundreds of patients, I have come to expect most will tell me that they want to be at home. But recently I have struggled with the complex realities of dying at home, and the unintended consequences of our making it a societal priority. (Richard Leiter, 9/3)

The government funds important, basic research that expands scientific knowledge and helps lay the foundation for targeted or applied research. This early work is essential, but it’s only the beginning of a long, arduous, and highly risky process that is the domain of private-sector companies. (Michael Rosenblatt, 9/2)

People in this town are becoming increasingly disgusted with the behavior they have to deal with on the streets. When there is no law enforcement, even law-abiding people are going to stop being tolerant and humane. They may even take matters into their own hands. Whether it’s someone half out of his mind on meth or a mentally ill person throwing things around in a store or going off in a Starbucks, it’s just a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt — and it could be the one who’s acting out. (Willie Brown, 8/31)

September is National Recovery Month. Today, an estimated 180,000 Georgians are living with an opioid-use disorder. To put this staggering number into perspective, that means we have a population the size of Macon coping with the malicious effects caused by the opioid crisis. (Carr and Campbell, 8/30)

SB 464 aims to reduce adverse maternal health outcomes in California by mandating implicit bias training for perinatal health care workers and requiring rigorous tracking of pregnancy-related deaths and complications. The California Department of Finance opposes this bill, deeming it too costly and saying it should be considered as an addition to next year’s budget instead. As medical students, we strongly disagree. (Jazzmin Williams and Christina Schmidt, 8/30)