This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Just come right out and say it.

Opioids are sold, at great profit, by rich multi-national corporations, represented in doctor's offices and legislative lobbies by people in expensive suits.

They are prescribed by licensed physicians. They are used and abused by, and increasingly cause the death of, white middle- and upper-class victims.

Thus is no one talking about launching a War on Opioids. There are no plans for SWAT raids, mass incarcerations, border walls, mandatory minimum sentences. None of the tactics that have been deployed in the decades-old, misbegotten War on Drugs, used against both victims and victimizers dealing with cocaine, heroin, LSD, meth and, most ridiculous of all, marijuana.

That's the good news because, as anyone who has honestly evaluated the War on Drugs since at least the Nixon administration knows, it has been a colossal failure.

But that's no comfort to the millions of Americans who have, or have had, or have lost loved ones to, grinding addictions to opioids. Or to the heroin they got hooked on when the prescription pain-killers either ran out or became ineffective.

As outlined in a Salt Lake Tribune report over the weekend, a poll shows that roughly a third of Utahns know someone who has been addicted to opioids. Of those, 71 percent sought treatment. Only 46 percent of those who sought treatment found it to be effective.

So, with a law enforcement approach rightly abandoned, and treatment both hard to come by and not always successful when it can be found, it is time to do what we can to avoid creating a new generation of addicts and facilities.

The Utah Department of Health is trying. It's multi-media "Stop the Opidemic" campaign is spreading the word that the opioids that come from your friendly neighborhood pharmacy are just as addictive, and potentially as deadly, as the smack that is sold from the back of a dirty van in a dark parking lot.

The campaign — http://www.opidemic.org — points out that many people in pain jump right to serious opioids when anything from basic Tylenol or Advil to massage therapy would do as well. It provides links to information about the dangers of opioids, to treatment options and other useful information.

The problem, though, is so deep and so deadly — it kills six Utahns every week — that solving it is going to take more than even the coolest website. This is an all-hands-on-deck crisis. The Health Department, police, schools and, most of all, the medical profession will have to step up and resist the urge to make such free and easy use of a potentially deadly medicine just because it comes in a clean bottle.

The resistance of people who now make a lot of money from the status quo will be fierce. It will be impossible to stigmatize Big Pharma with a stereotype image similar to the person of color selling — or using — illicit drugs.

That makes the problem harder to solve. But it's time to get after it.