This week, the
U.S. House of Representatives continued on with its prodigious passage of
opioid crisis-related legislation, passing 37 separate bills designed to
address the issue from a wide variety of angles. However, while the House has
certainly not been lacking in terms of the quantity of opioid bills passed as
of late, the quality of said bills—or at the very least their relative impact
on a crisis that takes the lives of 115 people every day in the United States—is
still in doubt.
Included among
the myriad measures advanced by the House this week to address the opioid crisis
was legislation aimed at limiting the supply of opioids into the general
population through the incentivization of innovations into non-addictive pain
treatments and harsher criminalization of the importation of illicit drugs like
fentanyl, along with bills looking to expand access to treatment and improve
best practices for providers looking to curb opioid misuse. The vast majority
of these bills passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, but, due in large
part to the lack of significant funding increases attached to this recent batch of legislation,
their impact on the meteoric rise in drug overdose deaths and substance use
disorders will likely be limited.
Among the more substantive
and bipartisan measures that passed were the Comprehensive Opioid Recovery
Centers Act of 2018 (H.R. 5327), which would start a grant program to fund at
least 10 comprehensive opioid centers across the country, the Peer Support
Specialist Recovery Act (H.R. 5587), which authorizes
$75 million for peer support technical assistance centers, and the Eliminating
Opioid Related Infectious Diseases Act of 2018 (H.R. 5353), which provides
$40 million annually for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
On Thursday, a pair
of more contentious bills—the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention (STOP)
Act of 2018 and the Transitional Housing for Recovery in Viable Environments
(THRIVE) Demonstration Program Act—passed with considerable Democratic
opposition. The STOP Act would impose penalties on the U.S. Postal Service if
it failed to collect advance electronic data on international shipments in an
effort to reduce the shipment of illicit synthetic drugs while the THRIVE Act
would take away existing funding from the Section 8 housing voucher program for
a demonstration program aimed at providing transitional housing for people with
substance use disorders.
“Collectively
these bills do not go far enough in providing the resources necessary for an
epidemic of this magnitude,” said
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who is the ranking member of the House Energy
and Commerce Committee and has been a consistent critic of what he and many substance
use disorder experts see as an insufficient, piecemeal approach to the opioid
crisis.
“We know what
works”, remarked
Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen in a statement on the
House’s legislative efforts on the opioid crisis earlier this week. “We don’t
have a shortage of ideas. We have a shortage of resources [and] the majority of
the bills currently being considered are tinkering around the edges. Many
present short-term or small fixes that will not allow frontline providers to
address the epidemic in the way we know is necessary.”
AIDS United
understands the nation’s opioid crisis as a public health emergency and
considers the heartbreaking death toll - 64,000 people died of drug overdose in
2016 - as a consequence of the country’s systematic failure to align behavioral
and public health efforts and to interrupt the failed system of
criminalizing drug use. AIDS United strongly endorses
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Elijah Cummings’ Comprehensive
Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act of 2018, which would authorize
significant, long-term funding for local strategies that reduce fatal
overdoses, increase substance use treatment, and address the infectious disease
consequences of the opioid crisis, and encourages Congress to sustain a robust
federally supported Medicaid Program.
The House will continue
voting on opioid-related measures next week, meanwhile the Administration
appears to be abandoning millions of Americans who need treatment or are affected
by chronic or pre-existing conditions, who rely on the Affordable Care Act for
access to critical, affordable health care coverage.
Posted By: AIDS United, Policy Department - Friday, June 15, 2018
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