Iowa is no exception to the opioid crisis happening across the country.

According to the University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center the death toll from prescription opioids has quadrupled in the last 20 years in Iowa. Two hundred people died from opioid overdoses in Iowa last year. State Senator Kevin Kinney (D) is a member of the bipartisan Opioid Epidemic Evaluation Study Committee, and this crisis has affected him personally, “It hits here in our community. There was a young man, he’s actually a cousin, that also died of an opioid overdose death this summer. So it hits people in all walks of life here in Iowa.”

Kinney says about 90 prescription opioid pills are expected to be sold per Iowan this year. He explains why legislators should be looking to curb this addiction, “People in all communities are dying because of opioid overdose death. I don’t care if it’s an urban area. I don’t care if it’s a rural area, it’s happening all over Iowa.”

The Opioid Epidemic Evaluation Study Committee is expected to make recommendations by November 15 on how to best tackle this issue. The Iowa Department of Public Health has also awarded $400,000 to upgrade the state’s prescription-drug monitoring system, which gives health-care practitioners a way to check if patients seeking pain medication have received similar prescriptions from other clinics.