While the roots of this epidemic reach back many years to when OxyContin flooded our cities and towns, 2016 has brought daily headlines about staggering overdoses, monumental drugs busts and lives lost.
An orangutan and her baby, which captured international attention after their arduous flight from Indonesia's epidemic of forest fires, were released back into the wild this week after receiving care from a conservation group.
The matter became particularly relevant as a result of the H.I.V.-AIDS epidemic going back to the 1980's, he said.
Headed by "Pistol" Pete Rollock, who became a sort of twisted deity in American crime lore, SMM rose off the back of an epidemic of crack, chaos and killing to export its brand of gangster culture from the Bronx's Soundview housing project across state lines.
(Which reminds me of a dream I had a while back about a futuristic epidemic of "hand harvesters," but I digress).
It offered a defence of the dignity of the black majority; absolved the ANC of moral responsibility "and placed the blame for the epidemic back onto the 'legacy of the past'".
The British squad will be undeterred, though, as they only competed in two out of the three World Cup regattas, deciding to miss the event in Hamburg as a result of the E.coli epidemic, and came back strongly in the last round in Lucerne, Switzerland, winning four golds in a total of 10 medals.
As far back as 2004, the FBI warned of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud, which they said would have "as much impact as the Savings & Loan crisis".
South Africa went back to using DDT, an organochloride, after an epidemic of malaria transmitted by pyrethroid-resistant mosquitoes in 1999 and 2000.
