poledriver
Bluelighter
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- Jul 21, 2005
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Assessing Trump’s Promises About Opioids
By Francie Diep -
President Donald Trump cares.
That was the message from an array of officials who spoke at a major conference this week about prescription painkiller and heroin addiction in America. In addition, a couple of top leaders promised progress on projects such as making naloxone, the opioid overdose-reversing drug, available over the counter.
More than 50,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2015, including more than 33,000 who died with prescription painkillers or heroin in their systems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest numbers. Drug overdose rates in America have increased by 33 percent since 2010, and still appear to be rising. Since Trump’s election, researchers and public-health workers have been watching anxiously to see what the federal government will do to try to stem the tide.
But how will administration officials keep all these promises?
“I want to state very clearly that this is a pro-treatment administration,” Richard Baum, the acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during his speech at the National Rx Abuse & Heroin Summit. This is a turnaround: Traditionally, American policy has been to incarcerate those charged with drug-use crimes, and about one in five Americans who think they need treatment for a substance-use disorder report that they don’t get it.
“He opened up with treatment. We’re on the same page here. Trump agrees,” says conference-goer Dan Ciccarone, a physician and researcher at the University of California–San Francisco with self-described “Democratic, liberal” leanings. “That was great. That alone made me relax.”
“There’s been some indication that progress might be reversed through Trump,” says Lisa Roberts, a public-health nurse for Scioto County in Ohio and a Republican who — like many experts, regardless of politics — liked the Obama administration’s approach to drug policy and worried about a change in administration. But, after the conference, Roberts says, “I felt like Trump had some advisors who may be able to point him in the right direction.”
Continued -
https://psmag.com/assessing-trumps-promises-about-opioids-484aae1a9c7
By Francie Diep -
President Donald Trump cares.
That was the message from an array of officials who spoke at a major conference this week about prescription painkiller and heroin addiction in America. In addition, a couple of top leaders promised progress on projects such as making naloxone, the opioid overdose-reversing drug, available over the counter.
More than 50,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2015, including more than 33,000 who died with prescription painkillers or heroin in their systems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest numbers. Drug overdose rates in America have increased by 33 percent since 2010, and still appear to be rising. Since Trump’s election, researchers and public-health workers have been watching anxiously to see what the federal government will do to try to stem the tide.
But how will administration officials keep all these promises?
“I want to state very clearly that this is a pro-treatment administration,” Richard Baum, the acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during his speech at the National Rx Abuse & Heroin Summit. This is a turnaround: Traditionally, American policy has been to incarcerate those charged with drug-use crimes, and about one in five Americans who think they need treatment for a substance-use disorder report that they don’t get it.
“He opened up with treatment. We’re on the same page here. Trump agrees,” says conference-goer Dan Ciccarone, a physician and researcher at the University of California–San Francisco with self-described “Democratic, liberal” leanings. “That was great. That alone made me relax.”
“There’s been some indication that progress might be reversed through Trump,” says Lisa Roberts, a public-health nurse for Scioto County in Ohio and a Republican who — like many experts, regardless of politics — liked the Obama administration’s approach to drug policy and worried about a change in administration. But, after the conference, Roberts says, “I felt like Trump had some advisors who may be able to point him in the right direction.”
Continued -
https://psmag.com/assessing-trumps-promises-about-opioids-484aae1a9c7
