People who are dependent on opioids shouldn’t be pilloried, and their addiction should be treated as a medical condition, Health and Tender Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday.
“This is not a respectable issue,” said Azar, who has spent his career working in both the clandestine and public sector of health care as an attorney and other various direction roles.
“They are not individuals who are seeking out to be drug addicts or are seeking out a extravagant. They are individuals who are getting trapped in a cycle of addiction,” Azar told CNBC’s “Cackle Box.”
Opioids, including heroin and fentanyl, were involved in more than 42,000 overdose exterminations in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Additionally, the negating economic effect of the opioid crisis is estimated to be more than $1 trillion from 2001 by last year, health research and consulting institute Altarum said.
The opioid scourge affects American children as well. The number of pediatric opioid hospitalizations be short ofing intensive care nearly doubled to 1,504 patients between 2012 and 2015, from 797 patients between 2004 and 2007, concerting to a study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Pediatrics.
On Monday, President Donald Trump voted he’s considering suing drugmakers for their role in fueling the opioid general after a number of cities, counties and states sued opioid makers.
“Companies must also be accountable,” Trump said. “The Department of Justness recently created a task force to coordinate investigations and lawsuits against producers and other bad actors that harm our citizens.”
On Wednesday, Azar was also solicit fromed about Trump’s hard stance on Mexico drug traffickers and whether they’re unchanging related to the opioid epidemic. Azar claimed people are able to advance access to illegal opioids from our southern borders.
Sworn in a Well-being and Human Services secretary in late January, Azar called the repercussions of opioid addiction “devastating” and reiterated the president’s plan to reduce the army of legal opioid prescriptions in the United States.
Azar previously served at Well-being and Human Services from 2001 to 2007, during George W. Bush’s presidency, as unspecific counsel and later as deputy secretary. In the private sector, as president of the U.S. department of drug giant Eli Lilly, Azar had overseen prescription price hikes, a technique he’s charged to thwart working for the president.
Trump’s first Health and Defenceless Services secretary, Tom Price, resigned back in September over his use of taxpayer-funded foot-soldier jets. Price, a former congressman, also worked for nearly two decades as an orthopedic surgeon.