With this tragic news just in, there are several important things to say about the drug overdose situation in this country.

The first is this: It is important that we don’t talk about the more than 107,000 overdose deaths in the United States last year like it’s just a statistic.

These are people’s lives that ended, people like you and me. People with friends and loved ones who cared about them, and who wanted them to succeed.

This is where we are with the continuing drug epidemic, according to the recently released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data from 2023:

1. Greater availability of Narcan: I’m a huge advocate for this overdose reversal drug, which is naloxone in nasal spray form. I have argued often that it should be as ubiquitous as the red-boxed automated external defibrillators (AEDs) you now see in malls, hotel lobbies, schools, airports, and workplaces.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a big and meaningful step in that direction when it........

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