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Here’s How Google Is Helping Fight The Opioid Epidemic

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Ethan Barton Editor in Chief
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Google is using its homepage and maps to promote a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) initiative intended to help combat the opioid epidemic.

Google’s homepage includes the text “Learn about how you can help curb opioid abuse” under its search bar with a link to a blog post about the DEA’s National Prescription Drug Take Back Day. (RELATED: DEA Won’t Explain Why It Banned This Powerful Tool Combating Opioid Addiction)

The agency’s project encourages people to anonymously bring unused medications, including opioids, to any one of 5,500 collection sites on Saturday, the 15th Take Back Day.

Google Maps also has a tool that helps users find those sites.

“We’re deeply concerned by the opioid crisis that has impacted families in every corner of the United States,” Google’s vice president of public policy Susan Molinari wrote in a Wednesday blog post.

More than 200,000 Americans have died from prescription opioid overdoses from 1999 through 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, 6.4 million people abused prescription drugs, and a majority of those pharmaceuticals were obtained from friends and family, according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

More than 912,000 pounds of prescription medications were collected at the last Take Back Day in October 2017.

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