More than two decades into America’s catastrophic opioid epidemic, the demographics of this unprecedented tragedy are clear. By far, the brunt of the harm has been borne by America’s poor and working classes.

Multiple studies show a strong correlation between lack of employment, economic distress and overdose fatalities. Indeed, a 2021 study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded most of the decline in life expectancy beginning in the mid-1990s among working-age men and women was attributable to drug poisonings of people with a high school education or less.