Surgeon General report calls addiction crisis ‘a moral test for America’

A landmark report released Thursday by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy places drug and alcohol addiction alongside smoking, AIDS and other public health crises of the past ­half-century, calling the current epidemic “a moral test for America” (Source: “Landmark report by Surgeon General calls drug crisis ‘a moral test for America’,” Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2016).

The report, “Facing Addiction in America,” pulls together the latest information on the health impacts of drug and alcohol misuse, as well as on the issues surrounding treatment and prevention. It offers reasons for optimism despite a still-increasing overdose epidemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans since 2000, and it presents evidence that addiction is a treatable brain disease, with new therapies under development.

In 2015, the report notes, substance-abuse disorders affected 20.8 million people in the United States — as many as those with diabetes and 1½ times as many as those with cancer. Yet, Murthy said, only one in 10 people receives treatment.

“We would never tolerate a situation where only one in 10 people with cancer or diabetes gets treatment, and yet we do that with substance abuse disorders,” he said.