In May, Sen. Mike Lee’s office published a report as part of a multi-year effort called the Social Capital Project. The idea behind the project is that modern life has become more fractured and, as a result, people are less healthy. From the report’s executive summary:

The goal of the project is to better understand why the health of our associational life feels so compromised, what consequences have followed from changes in the middle social layers of our society, why some communities have more robust civil society than others, and what can be done—or can stop being done—to improve the health of our social capital. Through a series of reports and hearings, it will study the state of the relationships that weave together the social fabric enabling our country—our laws, our institutions, our markets, and our democracy—to function so well in the first place.

Today, Lee’s office published a follow-up report titled “The Rise in Opioid Overdose Deaths.” It reads in part:

The ongoing opioid epidemic is the biggest public health crisis since HIV and AIDS came onto the scene over three decades ago. The causes of the crisis are myriad, as documented by Sam Quinones’s powerful book Dreamland and recently highlighted by the Chairman’s Office of the Joint Economic Committee. But against this complex backdrop, we know that it is not simply good or bad luck that determines who succumbs to opioid addiction…

These “deaths of despair,” to use the evocative phrase of Anne Case and Angus Deaton, include those from opioid and other drug overdoses, as well as those from suicides and alcoholic liver disease. The Project is also assessing the social disrepair caused by the opioid crisis—the collateral damage to families, communities, and institutions as a result of these drugs.

The highlight of today’s publication is a series of graphs which illustrate the rapid growth of the opioid epidemic in the U.S. over time. This one shows the number of unintentional opioid deaths from the late sixties to 2015:

These graphs include data up to 2015, but estimates suggest the number of deaths in 2016 could be as high as 60,000. This animated gif shows the rise in opioid deaths over time on a U.S. map:

Check out the Social Capital Project's state-by-state breakdown of growth in unintentional opioid overdose deaths: https://t.co/3sQx9vzpMo pic.twitter.com/oHdUR4RIaD

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) August 1, 2017

Yesterday, President Trump’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which is being led by Gov. Chris Christie, released an interim report on the epidemic:

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the most recent data estimates that 142 Americans die every day from a drug overdose. Our citizens are dying. We must act boldly to stop it. The opioid epidemic we are facing is unparalleled. The average American would likely be shocked to know that drug overdoses now kill more people than gun homicides and car crashes combined. In fact, between 1999 and 2015, more than 560,000 people in this country died due to drug overdoses – this is a death toll larger than the entire population of Atlanta. As we have all seen, opioids are a prime contributor to our addiction and overdose crisis. In 2015, nearly two-thirds of drug overdoses were linked to opioids like Percocet, OxyContin, heroin, and fentanyl. This is an epidemic that all Americans face because here is the grim reality: Americans consume more opioids than any other country in the world. In fact, in 2015, the amount of opioids prescribed in the U.S. was enough for every American to be medicated around the clock for three weeks.

Daniel Ciccarone, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s medical school, tells Five Thirty Eight, “I think finally this is a high-level message to say we are in a crisis, that we’ve moved beyond epidemic to a crisis.” A final report from the commission is expected in October.