Joe Biden's new plan to end the opioid epidemic is the most ambitious in the field

[applegrove]

Joe Biden’s new plan to end the opioid epidemic is the most ambitious in the field

The plan emphasizes more addiction treatment and prevention — and less war on drugs.

By German Lopez at Vox

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/6/21167803/joe-biden-opioid-epidemic-plan-drug-overdoses

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The plan is the most detailed and expansive proposal on the opioid crisis released by any of the presidential campaigns, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden’s current Democratic rival in the primary, or by President Donald Trump.

It would put $125 billion over 10 years — the largest funding commitment of any 2020 campaign — to scaling up drug addiction treatment and other prevention and recovery programs, paid for with higher taxes on pharmaceutical companies’ profits. It would also take steps to stop the overprescription of opioid painkillers while encouraging better care for chronic pain, and it would try to slow the flow of illicit drugs from China and Mexico. It would also take steps to “reform the criminal justice system so that no one is incarcerated for drug use alone.”

Recovering drug users, activists, and social service providers hold a morning rally calling for “bolder political action” in combating the overdose epidemic outside of the office of Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City on August 17, 2017. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The opioid crisis remains a huge problem across much of the country. Although 2018 saw the first decline in drug overdose deaths in decades, more people died of drug overdoses that year than of gun violence, car crashes, or HIV/AIDS at its peak, and the toll of more than 67,000 was still the second-highest drug overdose fatality rate, after 2017’s, in US history. Meanwhile, there are signs that drug overdose deaths involving stimulants, like cocaine and meth, and synthetic opioids, particularly illicit fentanyl, are still rising. That’s why experts argue a much more ambitious investment is required to fight the crisis and prevent future ones.

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