Certainly with COVID, the opioid crisis didn't get better.

It made it harder to treat people who are suffering from opioid addiction.

That's Dr. Andrew Kalladney.

He's the medical director of opioid policy research at the Heller School for Social

Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Now long before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Dr. Kalladney was attempting to deal with

another public health crisis, one that had claimed the lives of countless Americans, and

that's addiction caused by prescription and illicit opioid drugs.

Drug overdose deaths linked to opioids have climbed for decades now, and they've reached

pretty frightening levels.

128 people die every day from an opioid overdose.

That's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In fact, the opioid crisis was even declared a public health emergency in 2017.

Now in the last couple of years, there's been some positive news in the fight to hold drug

makers responsible in that pharmaceutical companies have paid billions to settle lawsuits

related to their role in the crisis.

And last fall, Purdue Pharma, that's the maker of oxycontin, the drug widely viewed as

fueling the opioid crisis, agreed to plead guilty to federal criminal charges and closed

down the company, with billions now going to treatment programs.

But as we all know, more than a year ago, the world changed.

All right, CNN, starting this morning, is calling the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic overnight

to the US.

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