Don’t Politicize Addiction Policy
With nearly 300 Americans dying every day from a drug overdose, the nation is experiencing a public health crisis of historic proportions. As such, you would expect the government to respond in an appropriate way—introducing a comprehensive initiative to confront the addiction and overdose epidemics, allocating appropriate resources and money, coordinating the efforts of local, state, and federal agencies—and make reducing the more than 100,000 drug-related fatalities each year a top priority. New York governor Kathy Hochul, for example, recently unveiled a state budget that includes an additional $400 million for addiction services—the largest such increase since the 1960s. At the same time, in Washington, D.C., lawmakers from both parties remain mired in partisan politics, posturing and spreading misinformation that threatens to derail the Biden administration’s best initial efforts to deal with the drug crisis.
The latest fracas erupted after a conservative website alleged that federal authorities were funding the distribution of “crack pipes” in “safe smoking kits.” Such kits—which, in addition to alcohol swabs, lip balm, and other materials to promote hygiene and reduce the transmission of diseases, do often include glass tubes that function as pipes—have a very clear purpose: to help addicts switch from intravenous drug use to smoking, which is regarded as less dangerous and not as likely to result in overdose. Disregarding the facts, social media pundits and far-right Fox News hosts accused President Biden of planning to send the crack pipes as part of his agenda to advance racial equity—a racist trope dating back to the 19802 crack epidemic that ravaged Black communities. Senators on both sides of the aisle subsequently introduced bills to ban the use of federal funds for purchasing both pipes and clean syringes. And eventually, the White House was forced to announce that none of the funds in the small $30 million grant would go toward funding pipes.
The money was destined for overdose prevention programs and nonprofits, as part of the administration’s support for harm reduction programs—the first time federal dollars have been made available for this strategy. Harm reduction policies—such as the country’s first safe syringe sites that opened last year in New York City—can be an important component of drug policy. These facilities, with trained personnel and medications on hand to prevent overdose, have been saving lives abroad for many years. Where they fail, however, is in not engaging with patients in a way that provides strong incentives to enter drug treatment—to actually change lives. Funding harm reduction pilot projects is an important tool for figuring out how these programs can become a bridge to treatment.
In this time of crisis, what we don’t need is to politicize addiction policy. Instead, let’s seize the opportunity to address both addiction and overdose, boosted by the windfall from the multibillion-dollar settlements of opioid lawsuits announced last month. Although the money will be doled out over many years, it could be part of a much larger increase in federal spending—up to $125 billion over the next decade—that is desperately needed to stop the spiral of drug deaths.