‘We Weren’t Arresting Our Way Out Of Anything’: How Tiny Police Stations Are Revolutionizing Fight Against Opioid Crisis
Police officers are often the ones on the front lines of the drug epidemic. Fed up with seeing members of their community dying in droves, they've taken matters into their own hands with new tools and initiatives. Meanwhile, experts say lawmakers' efforts against the crisis fall short of what are needed, and focus too much on where the epidemic began instead of where it's headed.
Politico:
‘The Police Aren’t Just Getting You In Trouble. They Actually Care.’
She watched her sister dying, slumped over her kitchen table, unconscious and gasping. When the police and paramedics came, they turned her sister onto the floor and sprayed naloxone up her nose—once, then a second dose. The anti-opiate did its work in minutes: Her sister woke up. Three days later, she opened the door to the police again. Derek Back, a police officer in plainclothes, and Tiffany Duggan, an addiction recovery coach, hadn’t come with an arrest warrant but a potential lifeline: a bed in a drug treatment facility. (Trickey, 6/2)
CQ:
Scope Of Addiction Crisis Dwarfs Response To Opioids
Congress faced a startling public health and political problem throughout 2016 as the number of people dying from opioid addiction climbed. The number of Americans succumbing to fatal drug overdoses more than tripled between 1999 and 2015, affecting a whiter and more geographically diverse population than previous drug crises. Lawmakers ultimately approved some modest policies aimed at curbing prescription drug abuse and provided $1 billion to support state efforts. Two years later, the situation is more dire and the political imperative to act is even more intense. Drug overdose deaths rose another 12 percent from October 2016 to October 2017, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provisional data. (Raman, Siddons and McIntire, 6/4)
CQ:
Stories From The Opioid Crisis: The Surgeon General And A Dozen Lawmakers
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams became a vocal advocate for improving how the criminal justice system handles drug offenders in no small part because of his brother Phillip, who is battling substance abuse in a Maryland state prison. Adams, Phillip and the rest of their family believe Phillip’s incarceration is a direct result of his gradual spiral into addiction. A Vicodin pill at a high school party led Phillip to use Percocet, which led to harder drugs and crime from there. It wasn’t long before Phillip was revolving in and out of prison for offenses that included theft, forgery and dealing crack cocaine. (Clason, 6/4)
CQ:
Advocates For Opioid Victims Push For Equal Insurance Treatment
Laws passed over the past decade lowered some barriers that patients struggling with substance abuse face in getting treatment, giving them more parity with other medical coverage. But the fight is on to give those laws more teeth. Improving parity essentially ensures that insurance plans equally cover mental health and substance abuse services, and medical and surgical services. But so far, this year’s opioid bills, which last Congress were packaged with mental health legislation, do not take as many steps to close the coverage gap as some would like. (McIntire, 6/4)
In related news —
Chicago Tribune:
Legislature Passes Bill To Improve Insurance Coverage For Mental Health, Addiction
State lawmakers passed a bill late Thursday meant to make it easier for patients with mental health and addiction issues to get insurance coverage for treatment. Advocacy and other groups pushed the bill in response to concerns that treatments for mental health and substance use disorders are not being covered at the same level as those for physical medical conditions despite a federal law prohibiting such disparities. Advocates considered the issue especially pressing given the epic of opioid addiction that has gripped the U.S. and Illinois. (Schencker, 6/2)
WBUR:
New Hampshire Mothers Struggling With Opioid Addiction Fight To Keep Their Children
New Hampshire has some of the highest rates of opioid abuse in the country. ...In the past few years the number of children taken into state custody has more than doubled, according to DCYF. (Gotbaum, 6/2)
