Addiction Epidemic: What Can We Do?

            I recently attended a community meeting at the library to hear a talk and discussion about what is being done about the opioid crisis. The speaker from the Maine Opiate Collaborative (MOC) spoke at length about statewide efforts to educate medical providers to stop over-prescribing opioids for pain. He said the campaign has been so successful, we have a problem now of under-prescribing for patients needing it for terminal illnesses and for palliative care for patients with long-term intractable pain for which no other medication works. He then talked about the 3 pillars of the Collaborative’s response to the crisis: law enforcement, treatment, prevention and harm reduction.

            Prevention got short shrift in the last few minutes of his talk. He mostly just described the problems with applying interventions to prevent addiction: too expensive and too complex with the social, economic, and mental health issues in involved.

            In discussion I suggested that prevention is the most important pillar for reducing the numbers of those addicted by self medication rather than those addicted from prescriptions and why wasn’t more being done about it. He replied, “Well what would you do?”

            I said, “Surely there are possible solutions, but what is lacking is the collective will to apply them."

            He mentioned an unfunded project proposal in the legislature. And then the discussion veered into other questions.

            I brought it back to prevention again by asking for more information about the unfunded proposal in the legislature. He mentioned as possible interventions early childhood education, improved counseling and peer support for mental health issues, and social interventions to improve the socioeconomic climate. He suggested these were the issues that were too complex and expensive for the legislature to solve. The discussion again veered into other topics.

            I brought it back a third time by suggesting that one thing we could do as private citizens would be to lobby our legislators. He said we couldn’t expect answers to these questions to come from Augusta or Washington. They needed to be found in communities.

            The meeting closed at this point before I got a fourth chance to bring it back to prevention and ask, What exactly should communities be doing? How can communities be expected to find the resources to solve this problem on their own if those we have elected to represent us cannot find the resources and will not support community efforts?

            And I wanted to say, Another thing we can do as private citizens is to take note of where the candidates for political office stand on this important issue and vote accordingly. Remember in November.