Four things: 1. a "libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education" is maybe not the most unbiased source

Four things: 1. a "libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education" is maybe not the most unbiased source regarding government mandates. 2. I had to follow three links through other stories to get to the source data, which is annoying. Why not just cite the source data. 3. The data trend from the actual source (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm) show that this was higher than last year, but long-term trends show that this is just another increase in a line of increases from, what, March of 2019 (or just from 2015, the beginning of the data in the graph, really) according to that graph. 4. "The sad yet inescapable conclusion is that in their efforts to halt one public health crisis, the authorities fueled another." That is not really borne out in the data, supported by the original report, and is just this writer's opinion. Correlation does not equal causation, I think is the line.