The other epidemic killing Americans

People are dying at record rates from opioid overdoses, and harm reduction advocates are asking the Biden administration to overhaul how it deals with the crisis.

 

by Michelle ChenTwitt 

Part 3 - Settlements

On top of federal and state funding for opioid treatment and overdose prevention, state lawmakers are anticipating an injection of funds from settlements in lawsuits filed against top pharmaceutical companies and distributors. Dozens of state attorneys general targeted these companies, including Purdue, AmerisourceBergen and Johnson and Johnson, for aggressively and recklessly marketing prescription opioids into communities. 

But advocates are concerned that states might divert settlement funds away from their intended purposes, such as compensating the families of overdose victims or funding treatment and prevention. (They point to the state funds yielded from the tobacco industry settlements of the late 1990s, of which only a small percentage was invested in anti-smoking programs.) 

Researchers with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in conjunction with a coalition of public health advocacy groups like American Medical Association and AIDS United, has issued a set of principles for spending the settlement money, demanding that state and local authorities establish dedicated funds for evidence-based prevention, treatment, and recovery measures. 

 

The coalition also emphasizes the need to use the funds to address racial inequities in the opioid overdose crisis, in light of vastly lower rates of using MAT among Blacks compared to whites and disproportionate criminalization of drug use for Black communities.

Harvard health economist Richard Frank said state governments should avoid plowing new funds into legacy programs that are ineffective, such as inpatient hospital-based detox that is not connected to community-based treatment, which often leaves people even more prone to overdose in the future. “Just like in much of medicine, we pay for things we’ve always paid for, and we don’t incorporate what works into the way we pay as much as we might.” But stigma and political resistance has hampered efforts to expand MAT programs, he added. “There is a philosophy out there that says, ‘Why would you replace one addiction with another addiction?’”

Source, links:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/harm-reduction-opioid/

 

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