On Tuesday, several dozen organizations dealing with addiction and other health issues asked Mr. Biden’s Health and Welfare Minister, Xavier Becerra, “to act urgently” to remove the rule that doctors go through a day of training before they get federal permission to prescribe Buprenorphine. Many addiction experts are also calling for the abolition of rules that were already relaxed during the pandemic so that patients do not have to come to clinics or doctor’s offices to receive addiction drugs.
Although many programs offering treatments, naloxone, and other services to drug users resumed, at least in part, as the pandemic dragged on, many others remain closed or severely constrained, especially if they were initially on a tight budget.
Sara Glick, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said a survey of about 30 syringe exchange programs she conducted last spring found many were temporarily closed at the start of the pandemic. After reopening, many programs would have limited the services or the number of people they could help.
“With health departments spending so much on Covid, some programs really had to cut their budgets,” she said. “That can mean seeing fewer participants or stopping their HIV and hepatitis C tests.”
At the same time, increases in HIV cases were reported in several regions of the country with high drug use, including two cities in West Virginia, Charleston and Huntington, and Boston. West Virginia lawmakers passed law last week introducing new restrictions on syringe exchange programs that proponents of the programs say would force many to complete.
Mr. Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act provides $ 1.5 billion to prevent and treat substance use disorders and $ 30 million to fund local services that benefit addicts, including syringe exchange programs. The latter is important insofar as federal funds can still largely not be spent on syringes for drug users, but the restriction does not apply to money from the stimulus package, according to the Office for Drug Control Policy. Last week, the government announced that federal funds could now be used to purchase fentanyl rapid test strips, which can be used to check whether drugs have been mixed or cut with fentanyl.
Fentanyl or its analogs have been increasingly detected in counterfeit pills illegally sold as prescription opioids or benzodiazepines – sedatives like Xanax used as anti-anxiety drugs – and meth in particular.
The northeastern states, which have been hardest hit by opioid deaths in recent years, had some of the lowest deaths in the first half of the pandemic year, with the exception of Maine. The states hardest hit included West Virginia and Kentucky, which have long led the way in overdose deaths, as well as western states like California and Arizona, and southern states like Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Comments are closed.