President Trump on Friday urged the public to fight harder to beat the national opioid crisis, a day ahead of National Prescription Drug Take Back Day.
“We have to get really, really tough, really nasty – whatever it takes because we have to keep them out of our country, out of our communities,” Trump said in his weekly address Friday.
[Also read: Can Washington fix the opioid crisis?]
Trump said law enforcement will do its part to collect potentially dangerous prescription opioids on Take Back Day Saturday, but said it’s up to everyone to help make sure old prescriptions are turned in. Almost 900,000 pounds of drugs were collected at last October’s National Take Back Day.
In 2016, 116 people in the U.S. died every day due to opioid overdoses.
“Most Americans who abuse prescription drugs get them from someone else’s leftover prescriptions. In fact, misusing prescription opioids can be a gateway to deadly heroin addiction or the unsuspecting use of fentanyl-laced drugs,” Trump said in his explanation of why take back day is “vitally important.”
This month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a significant uptick in opioid and methamphetamine seizures in the first six months of the government’s fiscal year, and have almost hit the levels seen in the last full fiscal year.
U.S. Border Patrol and CBP’s field operations officers confiscated 1,132 pounds of fentanyl from Oct. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30, 2017. However, just halfway through fiscal year 2018, they are already 94 percent of the way to hitting last year’s total haul.
