NSC offers presidential candidates a plan for tackling opioid misuse

Itasca, IL — The National Safety Council has developed a comprehensive plan to combat the nation’s opioid crisis and is calling on each U.S. presidential candidate to adopt the plan in full or use it to “close gaps in existing plans and policies.”

According to a Feb. 25 NSC press release, the National Plan to Address Opioid Misuse is endorsed by more than 50 organizations and employers nationwide.

A recent NSC analysis of the candidates’ plans to address opioid misuse showed that all include some critical directives, but none addresses employers’ roles and responsibilities or calls for expanded data collection to “help understand the scope and complexity of the overdose crisis more clearly.”

“Opioid overdoses are a public health crisis, and all presidential candidates should be giving it the attention it deserves,” NSC President and CEO Lorraine M. Martin said in the release. “Unfortunately, to date, opioid misuse has not been a significant element of the election cycle dialogue, and it needs to be. NSC and our partners urge everyone vying for the nation’s highest office to examine their plans or adopt the National Plan in full, so we can save lives and end these preventable deaths.”

For the first time on record, the odds of dying from an unintentional opioid overdose in a given lifetime (1 in 96) are greater than the lifetime odds of dying in a motor vehicle crash (1 in 103), according to the council. More than 130 lives are lost each day as a result of the opioid crisis.

NSC is urging member organizations to promote the plan, and encourages anyone interested in endorsing it to email NSC Director of Communications Maureen Vogel at [email protected].