One City’s Plan To Fight Its Heroin Crisis: Supervised Injection Centers
The mayor knew the idea would spark backlash, but he also knew he had to do something drastic to battle the crisis that held his city in its grip. Meanwhile, STAT offers an interactive graph that shows how the epidemic has spiked in the past 15 years.
The New York Times:
Fighting Heroin, Ithaca Looks To Injection Centers
Even Svante L. Myrick, the mayor of [Ithaca, New York], thought the proposal sounded a little crazy, despite the fact that it was put forth by a committee he appointed. The plan called for establishing a site where people could legally shoot heroin — something that exists nowhere else in the United States. “Heroin is bad, and injecting heroin is bad, so how could supervised heroin injection be a good thing?” Mr. Myrick, a Democrat, said. But he also knew he had to do something drastic to confront the scourge of heroin in his city in central New York. (Foderado, 3/22)
Earlier KHN coverage: Boston’s Heroin Users Will Soon Get A Safer Place To Be High (Bebinger, 3/3)
STAT:
Interactive: Explore The Spike In Overdose Deaths In The US
A new STAT-Harvard poll finds that 41 percent of Americans know someone who has abused prescription painkillers in the last five years — and 1 in 12 say they know someone who died from an overdose. (Bronshtein, 3/22)
Elsewhere, a measure before Connecticut lawmakers would limit prescriptions, and Kansas gets federal grants to help expand its opioid addiction treatment offerings —
The Connecticut Mirror:
Bill Would Limit New Opioid Prescriptions To Seven-Day Supplies
New prescriptions for opioid medication to address non-chronic pain would be limited to a seven-day supply under a proposal state legislators from both parties are backing – one of several bills aimed at curbing a drug epidemic that killed, on average, more than one person per day in Connecticut last year. (Levin Becker, 3/21)
The Kansas Health Institute News Service:
Kansas Health Centers Plan To Expand Opioid Abuse Treatment
More than $1.4 million in federal grants will help four Kansas health centers enhance their treatment programs for opioid abuse. In announcing the grants earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said abuse of and addiction to opioids, such as heroin and prescription painkillers, “is a serious and increasing public health problem.” (Hart, 3/21)
Meanwhile, KHN looks at the debate around the release of patient records for alcohol and drug abuse treatment —
Kaiser Health News:
Debate Arises Over HHS Plans For Privacy Rules On Addiction Treatment
What’s more harmful to patients being treated for drug or alcohol abuse: risking their health by keeping other medical providers in the dark about their substance abuse treatment? Or risking their jobs, homes and child custody arrangements by allowing potentially damaging treatment details to be electronically shared among an array of medical providers? Advocates have painted the possible patient outcomes in starkly different terms as they consider the federal government’s recently proposed update to guidelines that govern the release of patient records for alcohol and drug abuse treatment. (Andrews, 3/22)
