GUESS WORK? –

Sept. 28, 2023 – In other words, our colleagues want to fight the opioid crisis by continuing the same war on drugs — a war that for decades has destroyed the very communities it intended to help

This is a fool’s errand. Research shows that simply locking up more people doesn’t deter drug use or curb overdose deaths. In reality, the practice has led to jailing mainly low-level drug users. Meanwhile, drug kingpins — who should be held accountable for profiting off of others’ pain — largely go unpunished. In other words, they’ve got it all backward.

Rather than persisting in an endless game of whack-a-mole, chasing new drugs only after they’ve invaded our communities, we need to get ahead of this fight by tackling the root causes of this crisis head-on.

Here’s how we should start.

First, we must expand access to care and harm-reduction tools. A recent study found that 87% of people with an opioid use disorder don’t receive treatments that have been proven to work. Congress took an important step last year by allowing more health-care professionals to prescribe buprenorphine — one of the most effective medications for treating opioid addiction and reducing overdose deaths — but this change has not led to greater prescribing of the medication. We need to go further.

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