This week CNN devoted seven hours of programming to climate change, bringing the leading Democratic candidates onstage to grill them on the issue. I have no complaints about the decision, but I wish that some network would set aside a similar amount of time for a more immediate crisis, one that is killing tens of thousands of Americans right now — more than the crack epidemic at its worst, more than the Vietnam War.
The working shorthand for this crisis is “deaths of despair,” a resonant phrase conjured by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton to describe the sudden rise in deaths from suicide, alcohol and drug abuse since the turn of the millennium.