Article snippet: President Centers for Disease Control (CDC). And the Garden State, like many states across the country, has been hit particularly hard. A study released yesterday reports that the New Jersey's opioid death rate is actually understated. The University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy examined death certificates and found that nationally, opioid- and heroin-involved death rates are more than 20 percent greater than reported rates, and opioid death rates were "considerably understated in Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Jersey and Arizona." In February, Christie passed one of the toughest new laws in the country to combat the opioid epidemic. The law reduces the supply for opioid drugs prescribed to patients from 30 days to five days. On CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday, the New Jersey governor said that the opioid epidemic is responsible for a "9/11-scale loss of life every three weeks." "If that's not a national health emergency, I don't know what is," said Christie, whose commission on the issue wrote that "our citizens are dying" and that "the opioid epidemic we are facing is unparalleled." Trump, who frequently talked about the drug epidemic during the campaign, has been criticized for remaining largely quiet about the crisis as president. Last week, in Huntington, West Virginia -- the state with the highest rate of drug overdoses in the country -- Trump only mentioned the epidemic once. "You have a big problem in West Vi... Link to the full article to read more