If the opioid crisis isn't a national emergency, nothing is

Please act accordingly, Mr. President

Opioids.
(Image credit: iStock)

President Trump has shown himself in his not-quite-seven months in office to be the most surprise-prone chief executive in recent American history. We should by now have learned to expect anything from a man who takes to the pages of his second-least favorite newspaper to heap scorn on his handpicked attorney general and oldest political ally. If Trump announced tomorrow that he was in talks with "my generals" to embark on a six-month-long Instagram golf tour of Saudi Arabia via camel or assembling a White House task force to investigate the constitutionality of making fake news a crime, I would not blink. But I was still astonished to see on Tuesday that in between calls for the nuclear annihilation of the Korean peninsula he decided not to declare a national state of emergency in response to the ongoing crisis of opioid addiction in this country.

If 142 Americans dying of drug overdoses every day is not a "national emergency," then the phrase has no meaning.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.