"U.S Drug Deaths Climbing Faster Than Ever," is the headline over a New York Times front-page news article.
Why is this happening now? The Times article mentions a state lawsuit accusing "five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic." But there's no explanation offered at all for why drug companies today would be more rapacious than they were, say, five or ten or 15 years ago.
The Times leaves causes other than "drug companies" completely unexplored. Could the wave of state- and local- level marijuana legalization and decriminalization campaigns have played any part? The Times doesn't get into the question. Could it have anything to do with the fact that we had a president, in Bill Clinton, who owned up to drug use, and another, in Barack Obama, who wrote about using cocaine? Again, the Times doesn't get into it. It all seems like a fine topic for additional Times reporting.