OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
E
ach week we recognize those people and organizations
in the community deserving of public praise for the good
things they do to make the North Coast a better place to
live, and also those who should be called out for their actions.
SHOUTOUTS
A mass killer we’re
meeting with a shrug
Gary Henley/The Daily Astorian
The Astoria Troll (aka, Perry Browning) is always a popular family
photo opportunity at the Scandinavian Festival.
• Organizers of three of the North Coast’s premier annual
events that were conducted last weekend, the 50th Astoria
Scandinavian Midsummer Festival, the 53rd Cannon Beach
Sandcastle Contest and the Seaside Muscle and Chrome
car show. The events drew thousands of visitors to the area.
The three-day Scandinavian Festival also received the distinc-
tion of landing an official Oregon Heritage Tradition designa-
tion, joining the Sandcastle Contest, which was founded in 1964,
and the Astoria Regatta, founded in 1894, as other state desig-
nated traditions in Clatsop County. The festival recognizes the
region’s deep Scandinavian heritage from original settlers in the
region to those who now carry on the tradition here. In Cannon
Beach, thousands of people turned out to watch the grandi-
ose sand sculptures take shape and to participate in other events
that included a parade, a 5k run and live music on the beach. In
Seaside, the annual car show attracted 101 vehicles in the event
that included a barbeque, a highway cruise and a creative down-
town treasure hunt. It was sponsored by the Seaside Downtown
Development Association.
• Jenny Jacques, a registered nurse at Columbia Memorial
Hospital, who was named Ambulatory Care Nurse of the Year
by the March of Dimes at a ceremony earlier this month in
Portland. The recognition marked the third consecutive year a
nurse from Columbia Memorial has earned the organization’s
Oregon/Southwest Washington honor. Jacques has been a nurse
for 27 years, and was characterized by Trece Gurrad, Columbia
Memorial vice president of patient care services, as a dedi-
cated professional who leads by example with teamwork and
compassion.
• Participants and sponsors of the 10th annual Ducky Derby,
which recently raised more than $3,200 for Seaside Kids, a non-
profit organization which provides free athletic programs for
children in Seaside, Gearhart and Cannon Beach. Barb Hassan
was the derby’s winner and received a $500 award from Clatsop
Community Bank, which sponsored the event with KCRX 102.3
FM at Quatat Park.
• Dane Gouge’s Astoria Ford, which in partnership with
Costco, Fred Meyer and the Seaside Safeway collected 923
pounds of peanut butter to donate to the Clatsop Community
Action Regional Food Bank in the annual Ford Peanut Butter
Drive. The drive bettered last year’s results by more than four
times, and it will help provide food during the summer for
Clatsop County children who participate in the free breakfast
and lunch program during the school year.
CALLOUTS
• The school board for Portland Public Schools, which
approved raises that average about 10 percent or higher for about
30 of its top-ranking employees at a time in which it is consid-
ering eliminating 70 teaching positions because of its budget
crunch. According to the Oregonian, the top officials received
raises averaging about $15,000 per year when the board recently
approved its budget for the coming school year. In December,
auditors told leaders of Oregon’s largest school district that
employee pay was too low, and Interim Portland Superintendent
Bob McKean told the newspaper “it is a sacrifice but we can’t
lose our best people.” Top officials who are receiving raises
include assistant superintendents, human resource and special
education directors, four top lawyers and senior directors who
oversee principals.
Suggestions?
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about?
Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a
look.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, left, shakes hands with Veterans Affairs Secretary Da-
vid Shulkin before the start of a meeting of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction
and the Opioid Crisis, June 16 in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House complex.
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times News Service
A
bout as many Americans are
expected to die this year of
drug overdoses as died in the
Vietnam, Iraq and
Afghanistan wars
combined.
For more than
100 years, death
rates have been
dropping for Amer-
icans — but now,
because of opioids, death rates are
rising again. We as a nation are going
backward, and drug overdoses are
now the leading cause of death for
Americans under 50.
“There’s no question that there’s
an epidemic and that this is a national
public health emergency,” Dr. Leana
Wen, the health commissioner of
Baltimore, told me. “The number of
people overdosing is skyrocketing,
and we have no indication that we’ve
reached the peak.”
Yet our efforts to address this
scourge are pathetic.
We responded to World War II
with the storming of Normandy, and
to Sputnik with our moon shot. Yet
we answer this current national men-
ace with … a Republican plan for
health care that would deprive mil-
lions of insurance and lead to even
more deaths!
More on President Donald
Trump’s fumbling of this problem
in a moment. But it’s bizarre that
Republicans should be complacent
about opioids, because the toll is dis-
proportionately in red states — and it
affects everyone.
Mary Taylor, the Republican lieu-
tenant governor of Ohio and now a
candidate for governor, has acknowl-
edged that both her sons, Joe and
Michael, have struggled with opioid
addiction, resulting in two overdoses
at home, urgent calls for ambulances
and failed drug rehab efforts. Good
for her for speaking up.
It should be a national scandal
that only 10 percent of Americans
with opioid problems get treatment.
This reflects our failed insistence on
treating opioids as a criminal jus-
tice problem rather than as a public
health crisis.
A Times investigation published
this month estimated that more than
59,000 Americans died in 2016 of
drug overdoses, in the largest annual
jump in such deaths ever recorded
in the U.S. One reason is the spread
of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that
is cheap and potent, leading to
overdoses.
Another bad omen: As a nation,
we’re still hooked on prescription
painkillers. Last year, there were
more than 236 million prescriptions
written for opioids in the United
States — that’s about one bottle of
opioids for every American adult.
‘The number
of people
overdosing is
skyrocketing,
and we have no
indication that
we’ve reached
the peak’
Dr. Leana Wen
health commissioner of Baltimore
Even with all that’s at stake, there
are three reasons to doubt that Trump
will confront the problem.
First, Trump and Republicans in
Congress seem determined to repeal
Obamacare, which provides for
addiction treatment, and slash Med-
icaid. The Congressional Budget
Office estimated that the GOP House
plan would result in an additional 23
million Americans being uninsured
in a decade — and thus less able
to get drug treatment. Other, more
technical elements of the GOP plan
would also result in less treatment.
Second, Tom Price, the secretary
of health and human services, last
month seemed to belittle the medica-
tion treatments for opioid addiction
that have the best record, and Attor-
ney General Jeff Sessions still seems
to think we can jail our way out of
the problem.
Third, Trump’s main step has
been to appoint Gov. Chris Chris-
tie of New Jersey to lead a task force
to investigate opioid addiction. But
we needn’t waste more time inves-
tigating, for we know what to do —
and in any case Christie talks a good
game but bungled the issue in his
home state.
Among experts, there’s over-
whelming evidence of what works
best: medication in conjunction with
counseling. This doesn’t succeed in
every case, but it does reduce deaths
and improve lives. It also saves pub-
lic money, because a result is fewer
emergency room visits and inpa-
tient hospital stays. So the question
isn’t whether we can afford treatment
for all people fighting addiction, but
whether we can afford not to pro-
vide it.
The bottom line is that we need
a major national public health ini-
tiative to treat as many Americans
abusing drugs as possible, with treat-
ment based on science and evidence.
We also need to understand that drug
overdoses are symptoms of deeper
malaise — “deaths of despair,” in the
words of Anne Case and Angus Dea-
ton of Princeton University, stem-
ming from economic woes — and
seek to address the underlying issues.
Above all, let’s show compassion.
Addiction is a disease, like diabetes
and high blood pressure. We would
never tell diabetics to forget medica-
tion and watch their diets and exer-
cise more — and we would be aghast
if only 10 percent of diabetics were
getting lifesaving treatment.
Innumerable people with addic-
tions whom I’ve interviewed haunt
me. One was a nurse who became
dependent on prescription painkillers
and was fired when she was caught
stealing painkillers from a hospi-
tal. She became homeless and sur-
vived by providing sex to strangers
in exchange for money or drugs.
She wept as she told me her story,
for she was disgusted with what she
had become — but we as a society
should be disgusted by our own col-
lective complacency, by our refusal
to help hundreds of thousands of
neighbors who are sick and desper-
ate for help.