What is the Progressive Response to the Opioid Crisis?

By: Sophia Halloran, Emma Kiesling, and Daniel Ohiri

On Friday Nov. 1st the GW Roosevelt Institute held a Fireside chat entitled “Can the Blue Wave Fix the Opioid Crisis?” We were so excited to host Kate Werely, Health Policy Advisor for Representative Mike Doyle (D-PA18); Osa Imadojemu, Deputy Committee Director, Committee on Health at Council of the District of Columbia; and German Lopez, senior Vox correspondent on our campus (watch it here). Our discussion of policy solutions was wide ranging, covering past, present, and future solutions to the opioid crisis. The focus rested on policies the government can enact to help the healthcare community get treatment to people, as well as policies the healthcare community is enacting itself. The tension between the powerful PHARMA industry, lawmakers, doctors, and nurses is causing unnecessary and preventable deaths. The actors listed as well as the American people know that action needs to be taken especially as the crisis is waning from public attention,  despite families still being torn apart. The following is a list of ways to begin approaching the Opioid Crisis: 

What is the progressive response to the Opioid Crisis?

• Acknowledge the root cause of drug abuse is not moral depravity but rather a failure of institutional infrastructure both public and private.
• Begin the policy narrative by treating drug addiction as a medical issue, not a criminal issue.
• Realize the federal government is currently failing to provide adequate funding for both traditional and alternative drug prevention and rehabilitation apparatuses.
• Encourage states and localities to use whatever resources they have to engage in prevention and rehabilitation programs.
• Ensure minority and low income communities are not lost in policymaking process by encouraging states and localities to adopt adopt community action summits where community members share their input directly with elected officials.
• Recognize that the private healthcare sector must continue to also take steps in curbing their over reliance on prescribing opioids.