America lost 70,000 people to drug overdoses last year, a toll that dwarfs the threat from Iran that dominates political and TV coverage — bad news for young Americans and the families around them.

• Overdose deaths hit 70,000 in the first full year of the current Trump administration, most of them young.
• That death count far exceeds the number of Americans killed in Iranian attacks, a figure often inflated on cable news.
• The official count only covers illegal-drug deaths, leaving out the far larger group left permanently damaged.
• The political push is toward a hard crackdown on drug selling, framed as an emergency the country has ignored.

Outlook: Expect louder calls for aggressive anti-drug enforcement at home, and more friction with the foreign-policy focus on Iran.