As speculation grows that President-elect Biden will bring back the position of “drug czar” to his cabinet to lead an all-out effort to address the drug crisis, a long list of potential candidatesare floating their names for consideration. Among them is Patrick Kennedy, the former congressman and mental health care advocate, as well as others well known in the fields of addiction medicine and public health. The flurry of activity reflects a new sense of anticipation that Biden will follow through on plans for a $125 billion initiative over the next decade to combat the opioid epidemic, and shift federal policy from incarceration for drug offenses to treatment. The drug czar would direct the Office of National Drug Control Policy, overseeing the budgets of other federal agencies involved in mental health care and addiction treatment, and also coordinating national and international policing efforts. The position has received little attention during the Trump administration, although whoever holds it is nominally the country’s highest-ranking drug policy official.
And finally, Ohio could be the next state to consider a bill to decriminalize low-level possession of hard drugs and expand drug treatment, following the approval last month of a similar measure in Oregon. The bill before the Ohio House would reduce penalties for possessing smaller amounts of drugs, both to keep individuals out of prison and to get them into treatment instead. However, one issue raised by the Ohio bill, as well as by the Oregon measure, is that entering treatment is entirely voluntary, which means that substance users would have little incentive to give up a life of drugs.