The pharmaceutical industry was listed as one of the “Contributors to the Current Crisis” in the final report of President Trump’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. The report cites decades of aggressive marketing and industry-sponsored physician “conferences” aimed at expanding opioid use by minimizing the dangers of addiction. Lawsuits by state attorneys general, counties and local jurisdictions allege that the industry fostered the epidemic by overpromoting its products, while raking in billions as Americans became addicted and overdosed. “To this day,” the commission says, “the opioid pharmaceutical industry influences the nation’s response to the crisis.”

It sure does. In its response to an epidemic that now kills 50,000 Americans a year, the Trump administration wants to spend tens of millions of dollars in part to help the industry responsible sell ostensibly nonaddictive pain medications and “abuse deterrent” opioids that are as addictive as the original opioids.

In a recent speech, President Trump praised a new public-private partnership involving the National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies to develop nonaddictive painkillers and new treatments for addiction and overdoses. “I’ll be pushing the concept of nonaddictive painkillers very, very hard,” he promised. The N.I.H. says it hasn’t set a budget for its “public-private initiative” but spent roughly $600 million on research into pain and opioid use and abuse in 2016.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that prescribers avoid opioids for most chronic pain. Experts not affiliated with the pharmaceutical industry urge doctors to make greater use of over-the-counter analgesics and non-pharmacological pain relief methods like physical and spinal manipulative therapies, movement retraining and electrical stimulation.