Drug Czar: It’s Time to Treat Addiction Like a Chronic Disease

AND NOT A CRIME –

Dec. 8, 2021 – And that support means approaching addiction and substance use not as a moral decision, but as a chronic relapsing brain disease.

“It’s no different than many of the other chronic diseases in so many aspects like diabetes and hypertension,” said the drug czar.

In addition to expanding funding for harm reduction efforts, the Biden administration also announced on Wednesday a framework for states to create syringe exchange-friendly laws. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who use syringe exchanges are five times more likely to enter drug treatment and three times more likely to stop using drugs than those who don’t use the programs. Advocates for harm reduction say these efforts work. Studies have found that people who check and test their drugs using fentanyl test strips are more likely to modify their drug use by using less, using slower, or making sure naloxone is available.

It’s a shift in how the country has long approached drug use, Gupta said.

“If you’re looking to save lives and you’ve reached a historic unprecedented level of deaths, then you cannot avoid looking at any and every option in order to save those lives,” he said.