while the coronavirus pandemic did demand most of our attention, another epidemic continued to surge. america s drug epidemic now deadlier than it has ever been. record death toll. for the first time on record, more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in a 12-month period between may 2020 and april 2021, much of it from elicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. president biden s new drug czar, dr. gupta, no relation to me told me we need to more strongly employ harm reduction, making drus use safer with things like mel locks own, clean syringes and testing drugs for the presence of fentanyl. people will say, look, you re enabling drug use. that s the provocation. as a physician who has spent his career dealing with science and moving data around, we just