Article snippet: When fentanyl. The amount of prescription opioids legally sold nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2010, despite no change in the amount of pain that Americans reported. Today, drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the United States -- the majority of those lethal episodes involve an opioid. President Trump made the crisis a primary talking point during his campaign for the White House and two months have his Chris Christie to explore ways to curb opioid abuse and overdoses. The first report from the commission gave the president a frank recommendation: "declare a national emergency." Several experts said such a decision would be "unprecedented." These declarations have typically been reserved for natural disasters, infectious diseases and terrorist events. To find any kind of precedent, Dr. Rebecca Haffajee an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Department of Health Management and Policy, says you have to look at the six states that individually declared states of emergency for the opioid epidemic. According to Haffajee however, the circumstances under which they can be declared and how they define an emergency vary. As the states have different methods of declaring an emergency, so, too, does the federal government. Experts say there are two ways the White House can declare a national emergency on a drug crisis: under the Stafford Act or the the Public Health Service Act. The Stafford Act opens up federal resources... Link to the full article to read more