The opioid public health crisis is here and kills all kinds of people.
Local steps to prevent future deaths should include the Essentia and St Luke's systems in Duluth forbidding all individual physician opioid prescriptions. They must delegate and permit authorized opioid prescriptions only by a joint physician panel with resources to provide for expert alternatives, aggressive monitoring, and access to treatment.
If Essentia and St Luke's fail in this, the city of Duluth and St. Louis County must criminalize physician opioid prescriptions resulting in patient addiction with fines, public ridicule, and personal physician liability for all needed, subsequent addiction services for each patient with an opioid prescription.
There are many other federal and state steps to be taken to meet the opioid public health challenge, but this we can do now in Duluth with benefit.
We may wait for the deaths of prominent citizens or their children to motivate us to take these steps. It is better to do it now.
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Larry Spears
Duluth
