It's finally official: On Wednesday, the government publicly released data showing that for the first time since 1990, drug overdose deaths in the United States have fallen from a little more than 70,000 in 2017 to 68,557 last year. That's progress, but if half the number of people had died of opioid overdoses - or even a tenth - these figures would still qualify as a moral crisis.
We still don't know if this is the beginning of a sustained trend (deaths due to prescription opioid overdoses are plummeting, but overdoses involving fentanyl continue to surge). But even if death counts continue to fall, we still need major policy changes rooted in a quality that's been in short supply: compassion for those with substance abuse disorder.