Pubdate: Fri, 12 Feb 2016
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2016 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409

USE AVAILABLE TOOLS TO FIGHT OPIOID DRUG CRISIS

AMERICA is suffering from a pernicious and growing addiction to a 
category of drugs that include prescription pain medications and heroin.

Opioid abuse and overdoses take a lethal toll in Washington and 
across the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
puts the U.S. death count at 28,648 for 2014.

President Obama's welcome, if belated, response to this crisis would 
direct $460 million toward states to dramatically expand access to 
medication-assisted treatment for opioid abuse.

As the University of Washington's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute 
noted in a 2015 online briefing, medication-assisted treatment "can 
be a lifesaving and cost-saving intervention for those with opioid 
use disorder."

The remainder of the proposed budget authorization would go toward 
broad efforts to better train physicians on prescribing prescription 
pain medications and monitoring patients, tighten law enforcement on 
illegal sales and get an effective, lifesaving treatment for 
overdoses - naloxone - into the hands of first-responders.

Spending more to combat opioid abuse should be an easy call for 
lawmakers reaching for points of concensus. Addiction to prescription 
pain medications and heroin crosses urban and rural lines and 
partisan boundaries, and melds gender, age and income levels.

Treatment and care of those with opioid addictions is an evolving 
medical issue. No treatment of opioid use disorder is a panacea, as 
UW Professor Caleb Banta-Green notes in a co-authored article in last 
month's edition of Addiction, the journal of the Society for the 
Study of Addiction.

But there is scientific agreement on ways to treat opioid addiction 
with methadone and buprenorphine, cut mortality and reverse overdoses.

As Banta-Green notes in an interview, medical science has the tools - 
they just need to be implemented. That includes, he notes, regular 
users of opioids and their families having access to naloxone for overdoses.

Banta-Green, a senior research scientist with UW's Alcohol and Drug 
Abuse Institute and an affiliate associate professor with the School 
of Public Health, has been a White House science adviser and 
testified before Congress.

The opioid-abuse epidemic comes with manageable physical and brain 
chemistry challenges. Fundamental to it all is dramatic expansion of 
medication-assisted treatment sought by Obama.

Banta-Green emphasizes that expanding awareness and demand for 
treatment are key as well.

The growing number of Americans who need help makes it clear that 
failing to act is not an option. Spending money would save money in 
health-care and law-enforcement costs, and prevent physical, 
emotional and social trauma.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom