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Sessions: Need 'Climate Of Hostility' To Combat Opioid Crisis

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was on the ground in the Miami area to talk about fighting a crisis.

"We've never seen the kind of death we're seeing today," said Sessions.

Sessions was speaking at the United States Southern Command for a summit with experts on what could be the biggest domestic battle in recent history.

Opioids, the equivalent of 9/11 every three weeks.

"This nation has got to get its head straight on it, we've gotta create a climate of hostility to this," said Sessions.

The reality by the numbers Sessions calls breathtaking.

According to data from the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, 175 lives are lost daily.

Opioids are also the leading cause of unintentional death for people under 50, numbers that are impacting life expectancy in the United States.

In 2016, 42, 249 died of an opioid overdose.

The nation is failing at nearly every metric in the fight against it.

"We have virtually record availability, exceeding high unprecedented purity which makes it more addictive and the price is low," Sessions said.

It's also a very local epidemic for Miami-Dade and Broward County.

CBS4 News followed BSO deputies over 3 days of rounding up dealers. Drugs like Heroin and Cocaine are mixed with powerful and deadly Fentanyl.

"So deadly its compact, it's a small amount can produce tens of thousands of dosage, tens of thousands of death units," said Sessions.

The question now, said the Attorney General for the room is, what to do about it?

"It cannot be business as usual, something special has to happen," he said.

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