March 5, 2024 – A yearlong investigation by STAT shows that virtually every sector of American society is obstructing the use of medications that could prevent tens of thousands of deaths each year. Increasingly, public health experts and government officials cast the country’s singular failure to prevent overdose deaths not as an unavoidable tragedy but as a conscious choice. Narcotics Anonymous, a nationwide organization that promotes the 12-step model of addiction recovery, actively opposes the use of medication, leading would-be participants like Mark Palinski, 38, to be banned from chapter meetings in North Carolina after disclosing that he had been prescribed buprenorphine. Hundreds of jails and prisons bar their use even when prescribed by a doctor, forcing people like Amanda Cassidy-Trejo, 41, to suffer weeks of agonizing withdrawal in a San Antonio jail cell. Even specialized methadone clinics, which otherwise support the use of medications, can make them all but impossible to access, requiring patients like Rebecca Smith, 65, to show up daily at her Detroit clinic to swallow a single dose — a rule that forced her to quit her job.
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