The White House has announced a new set of initiatives designed to curb the country's ballooning opioid and heroin addiction problem. The goal is to expand treatment for drug users and to increase coverage for substance abuse and mental health services.
CNN reported that the Obama administration is allocating $94 million to provide additional treatment services to 271 community health centers nationwide. An extra $11 million will go to state funding for medication-assisted treatment programs. Additionally, the prescription limit of the anti-addiction drug buprenorphine has been raised from 100 patients per physician to 200 patients per physician.
"Expanding access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid-use disorders has been a top priority for this administration," said National Drug Control Policy director Michael Botticelli. "Research clearly shows that this approach, when combined with behavioral therapies, is more effective at sustaining recovery and preventing overdose."
Other new initiatives include the establishment of a Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity Task Force and for the Department of Health and Human Services to fund and carefully supervise needle exchange programs.
Health officials in the U.S. were delighted about the recent announcement. For his part, Harm Reduction Coalition director Daniel Raymond said the additional health centers and needle exchange programs would greatly reduce HIV and hepatitis C cases in the country.
Addressing an audience at the National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta on Tuesday, President Obama said opioid and heroin addiction in the country should be seen as a health problem and not as a moral failing. He doubled down on his call last month for an extra $1.1 billion in congressional funding to curb the ballooning health problem, as per The Guardian.
"For too long we've viewed drug addiction through the lens of criminal justice," Obama lamented. "The most important thing to do is reduce demand. And the only way to do that is to provide treatment, to see it as a public health problem and not a criminal problem."
