US surgeon general Dr Vivek Murthy calls drug addiction crisis a "moral test for America"

In a landmark report released Thursday US surgeon general Vivek Murthy added drug and alcohol addiction to the list of public health crises such as smoking, AIDS and others of the past ­half-century, calling the current epidemic ''a moral test for America.''

''The reason I'm issuing this report is I want to call our country to action around what has become a pressing public health issue,'' Murthy said in an interview. ''I want our country to understand the magnitude of this crisis. I'm not sure everyone does.''

The report, ''Facing Addiction,'' considered the latest information on the health impacts of drug and alcohol misuse, as also on the issues surrounding treatment and prevention. It offered reasons for optimism despite a still-increasing overdose epidemic that had killed over 500,000 Americans since 2000. It also presented evidence that addiction was treatable, with new therapies under development.

The report pointed out that in 2015, substance-abuse disorders affected 20.8 million people in the US. Though these numbers were on par with the number of people suffering from diabetes and one-and-half times as many as those with cancer, according to Murthy, only one in 10 people received treatment.

''We would never tolerate a situation where only one in 10 people with cancer or diabetes gets treatment, and yet we do that with substance-abuse disorders,'' he said.

For too long, addiction had been looked at as a character flaw or a moral failing, rather than as a chronic disease of the brain, Murthy said during a morning news conference.

"We have 20.8 million people in America with substance abuse disorders," the surgeon general noted. But only one in 10 is getting treatment, research shows.

"That is unacceptable, we have to close that gap," Murthy said.

Addiction to alcohol or drugs is not hopeless. "There's strong evidence that prevention and treatment work," Murthy said.

"The report released today confirms what we have known for a long time: Addiction is a disease of the brain that can and should be treated with evidence-based, compassionate care," said Dr Jeffrey Goldsmith, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, HealthDay News reported.