Washington announces new funding to fight the scourge of opiates

The opioid crisis in the United States represents hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in 20 years.

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To strengthen the fight against opiates in the United States, the White House announced new funding and investments to fight this increasingly deadly scourge.

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With our correspondent in Washington,

The opiate crisis in the

is more than 500,000 deaths in 20 years and it is accelerating.

More than 100,000 people were victims of overdoses last year, a figure up 15% from 2020.

Initially prescribed as painkillers for people with particularly serious illnesses, these drugs then went beyond this strict framework.

And today, the problems of dependency are multiplying, nourishing a very important parallel market.

The tablets, mostly made in China, are widely available on the internet without a prescription and are sometimes up to fifty times stronger than heroin.

A phenomenon that affects cities and countryside alike, which is why the White House is announcing $1.5 billion in

 to help communities across the country.

Cities, rural areas or even tribal communities, where the crisis hits particularly hard, are concerned.

To address the problem, access to Naxolone, the only effective antidote, will be facilitated, because in some states its prescription is strictly regulated and the police will also benefit from additional funding.

These measures must come to reinforce the system of financial sanctions against the entities accused of feeding the traffic already in place.

► To read also: Opioid crisis in the United States: a person dies of overdose every 5 minutes

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• United States

• Dope

• Health and medicine