Answering the bell

SeventyX7 is a nonprofit organization established to address the opioid crisis through education and public policy—aiming to bring hope by navigating treatment, recovery, and rhetoric around opioid addiction. Our Vision is To facilitate change through public policy for individuals, families, and communities dealing with opioid addiction. SeventyX7 aims to help build new systems around recovery, fostering a more compassionate, informed, and supportive world for individuals suffering from opioid use disorder.

While the world’s attention was turned to the Covid-19 Pandemic, a familiar foe was raging in America’s Heartland. Opioid Use Disorder continued to ravage the U.S. between 2020 and 2022. 83,000 opioid-related deaths accounted for most of the country’s more than 100,000 overdose deaths in 2022.

564,000 Americans died between 1999 and 2020 from an overdose involving an opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids. That is more Americans killed than in World War II. Currently, 187 people die every day in the U.S. from opioid related overdoses and addiction. Opioid deaths accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic, and experts say the outlook for the next decade is bleak. With synthetic street drugs becoming more and more prevalent, researchers expect 1.22 million opioid death in the U.S. and Canada over the next decade.

Opioid deaths have skyrocketed in the U.S. since 2016 when the synthetic opioid Fentanyl became more prevalent. Cheaper than pharmaceuticals or heroin, illicitly made Fentanyl is flooding the U.S. through Mexico and Canada. The reality is that Fentanyl’s potency makes it far more dangerous from an overdose perspective than its predecessors. It is being used to make fake pharmaceuticals for street sales and even being laced into other street drugs like marijuana. Because of its strength, addicts that can survive and manage Fentanyl dependency also cannot be treated with traditional suboxone. Only methadone works for medically assisted treatment (MAT) for Fentanyl addiction.

One reason for the U.S. opioid crisis has been a consistent string of failings by the federal government. Initially, the issue was a regulatory failure as Oxycontin was allowed to be marketed incorrectly by the pharmaceutical industry. Now, politicians in Washington D.C. are in a largely partisan fight over how to react to the scourge of Fentanyl with no clear border strategy in site to combat its illicit import.