NYAPRS Note: In Massachusetts, there are those who believe that curbing access to prescription opioids will meaningfully combat opioid addiction. According to the author of the article below, a medical doctor, that line of thinking is “misleading” and “misguided,” and that “cheap, potent, often tainted heroin” is the real killer.
She argues that Massachusetts’ comprehensive legislation to battle opioid addiction doesn’t get to the root of the problem, and does not include essential items like
- A focus on evidence-based practices, rather than short-term detox
- Funding for long-term, structured sober living facilities for those at the greatest risk for relapse
- Programs for incarcerated individuals to become – and stay – sober
NYAPRS recognizes the urgency of comprehensive addiction recovery strategies. Please join us at our Executive Seminar April 21-22 at the Hilton Albany to hear Steve Samra and and Jeffrey McQueen present, “Coming Back, Moving Forward: Recovery from Trauma and Addiction.” For more details including the full agenda and registration information, please visit: https://rms.nyaprs.org/wp-content/plugins/files/civicrm/persist/contribute/files/2016%20NYAPRS%20AgendaFinal3.pdf
My Turn/Potee: Missing Mark on Addiction
The real killer is cheap, potent heroin
By Ruth Potee The Recorder Sunday, March 20, 2016
Gov. Charlie Baker’s signature on the “most comprehensive measure in the country to combat opioid addiction” may have made a real difference three or four years ago.
Reducing the overprescription of opioids — while still having them available to those helped with their chronic, severe pain — is a critical step in shifting this public health emergency. Limiting the number of unused pills sitting in medicine cabinets around the Commonwealth reduces risk to children, adolescents, and others susceptible to this disease. Allowing a patient to pick up two Vicodin after a root canal instead of 20 is in keeping with the best practices of patient selfdetermination.
But the pills are no longer our main problem. Massachusetts has been in the bottom quintile of opioid prescribers in the nation for years. Most (80 percent) of pills used for a person’s addiction don’t come from a legitimate prescription; they come from diversion. The vast majority of oxycodone that came to Massachusetts prior to 2011 did not come from the prescription pads of Massachusetts prescribers. It came from pill mills in strip malls throughout Florida.
Believing that limiting shortterm prescriptions for acute pain is going to significantly reduce the opioid epidemic is misleading and misguided. By fighting the last war, it prevents us from focusing on the real killer: cheap, potent, often tainted heroin.
For the first time in my 14 years providing care for those struggling with an opioid addiction, I am seeing people whose first drug was heroin. They did not have a pill problem, they did not smoke cigarettes and they had an indifferent relationship with marijuana. They are 14 to 18yearolds who struggle with anxiety, depression, and a virtually universal history of childhood trauma.
There is nothing in this longawaited bill that helps those who are currently battling addiction.
There is not one word about improving access to evidencebased treatment and decreasing the focus on short term “detox” stays that cause more harm than good.
There is no funding for longterm structured sober living facilities where our sickest patients can go to get away from their local triggers that cause recurrent relapse.
There is no increased funding or programmatic mandates for the only structured sober living facilities that do exist (i.e., jails) to help inmates get better during their incarceration. “Gamechanging” legislation would have involved the Commonwealth of Massachusetts serving notice that it was no longer abiding by bizarre federal regulations that both restrict how many patients a doctor can treat with buprenorphine and prohibit nurse practitioners and physician assistants from prescribing this lifesaving medicine.
On the other side of the pendulum, those who suffer with chronic pain and show clinical benefit from longterm monitored use of opioids are the newly stigmatized. Repeatedly we are told that this chronic opioid use is “highly addictive” or “as addictive as heroin.” This is not true. The National Institutes of Health puts the percent who may develop addiction at 5 percent, a number found in repeated studies. Is this a proportion we should work to reduce? Certainly. Every effort should be enacted to make sure that patients using opioids for chronic pain are getting true benefit and that their use is not causing harm to themselves or to society.
Insurance companies were fine shelling out billions of dollars to pay for prescription drugs over the last 20 years but no insurance company has proposed a comprehensive approach to help those patients who suffer with pain. There is no state mandate urging coverage for acupuncture, massage therapy, somatic functional therapy, or cognitive behavioral therapy. Blue Cross Blue Shield bragged about a 54 percent decrease in opioid prescriptions in their 2014 annual report but did not mention a single effort they put forth to reduce the experience of chronic pain in their patients’ lives. The money that is no longer going to pay for pain prescriptions should fund support groups, gentle yoga, free memberships to local Ys, and water therapy. Copays for physical therapy and effective traumainformed therapy should be waived for those with chronic pain.
The death rate from opioid overdose did not decrease in 2015 and this new legislation in not likely to alter the death rate in 2016. I am not going to join the selfcongratulatory crowd. This is one small step forward but we have a long path to travel before the Bay State can be held as the nation’s model for reducing harm and improving treatment for those who struggle with addiction to opioids.
http://www.recorder.com/Opinion/Columns/My-Turn-Potee-Missing-mark-on-addiction-982044