Biden Weighs Options for Reducing U.S. Overdose Deaths

The worsening drug crises around the country may prompt President Joe Biden to consider more innovative approaches to overdose reduction that advocates have been proposing for years and other countries have adopted, reports the Washington Post. Reform suggestions from experts, academics and researchers range from completely decriminalizing the consumption of drugs, as Portugal did in 2001, to overturning the way the health-care system treats users. As a result of failing to fully integrate addiction treatment into the healthcare system, just 18 percent of the people with substance use disorder who needed the anti-addiction medication buprenorphine in 2019 received it, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, though it is the most effective way to battle addiction. Only 17 health care providers per 100,000 people were approved to dispense it in 2017.

Among U.S. facilities with opioid treatment programs, more than 90 percent offered outpatient care between 2009 and 2019, according to the U.S. Substance and Mental Health Services Association (SAMHSA). But only 8 percent to 10 percent offered residential, non-hospital treatment and just 7 percent to 12 percent offered inpatient care. The American Medical Association has called for broader access to anti-addiction medication, as well as the opioid overdose antidote naloxone. Opioids, mainly illegal fentanyl, continue to drive the overdose epidemic. Meanwhile, the Drug Policy Alliance favors complete decriminalization, along with redirecting money from courts, jails and enforcement to treatment and harm reduction. In response, the Biden administration is working to expand access to its drug-free communities program for non-English speakers, is piloting an effort to integrate adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, into the program, and their drug policy office announced in February that it would prioritize harm reduction, or efforts to minimize the harms of substance use.