How To Address The Opioid Crisis In Your Company

As the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI) Foundation explained in a recent report, drugs are now the leading cause of death for prime working age Americans. Overdoses killed more people in 2016 than the total number of U.S. soldiers who died during the entire Vietnam War.

The culprit, the MAPI Foundation says, is the opioid crisis. Two-thirds of drug overdose deaths in 2016 involved a prescription or illicit opioid. That year, overdose deaths from opioids were up fivefold compared to 1999.

This crisis puts the metals and broader manufacturing industry at risk and threatens U.S. competitiveness. As the MAPI Foundation reports, the World Health Organization has reported the U.S. drug-related death rate is five times higher than Germany’s, sixteen times higher than Japan’s, nineteen times higher than China’s and 29 times higher than South Korea’s.

The report outlines three things metals and manufacturing industry leaders can do to address the opioid crisis. Click here to read it. The MAPI Foundation also has created The U.S. Drug Overdose Death Rate Map, which provides an interactive geographic overview of the number of drug overdose deaths per 100,000 by county. Click here to learn more about the opioid crisis in your region.