Lots of folks here are justifiably concerned about the human tragedy which has come from the folks in central Louisiana experiencing epic floods. This June in WV, we experienced similar floods, and we are still rebuilding and cleaning up even after the television cameras came and went. We know the difficult job folks face rebuilding their lives. Businesses were wiped out, jobs were lost and families had to relocate at great expense, even while they struggled to get insurance payments or charitable help and worked to rebuild homes and lives.
West Virginia is also experiencing a man-made disaster- an exploding heroin epidemic built on the foundations of a misguided medical advice leading to over prescribing opioid paid killers like Oxycontin. This epidemic will take more lives than the horrific floods did (20 lost their lives). But there is a critical shortage of doctors, psychologists and counselors to treat this epidemic and the inadequacy of the medical response is limited by ability to prescribe some alternative drugs like suboxone and methadone to help addicts with withdrawal and in some cases, maintenance to prevent resumption of their addiction. There aren’t enough treatment centers. There aren’t enough doctors, and heroin and opioid prescription addiction are difficult to treat. This morning I learned that President Obama is still reading and responding to 10 letters from regular American citizens, even while on vacation. “Obama replies to letter about opioids from WV counselor” The email was sent in March, but the response came this week, after Obama had read it and worked to take some executive and administrative actions.
“Mosley, a licensed psychotherapist, has a private practice office in Alum Creek that offers Suboxone treatment to opioid addicts. Because of federal guidelines limiting the number of medication-assisted treatment caseloads that physicians can take on, Mosley routinely got calls from addicts he couldn’t help. That particular March day had been busier because a local substance abuse treatment physician had passed away. Patients inundated Mosley’s clinic with calls as they sought help with their problem.
After 1 a.m., Mosley sat down and typed an email to President Barack Obama, asking him to loosen the federal limits on the number of patients that doctors are allowed to treat each year.
Mosley got word last week that the president had not only read his email, but he also wrote him a response.
“I was more like venting, and I actually got a response,” Mosley said Thursday.”
Why take so long to respond? President Obama was working to solve the problem. When Mosley wrote his letter, the addiction physicians he worked with could only prescribe the suboxone medication to 30 patients in their first year and only 100 per year subsequently. Mosley’s counseling patient’s prescribing physicians had long since maxed out those levels. President Obama was writing back to let Mosley know the rule had been increased to 275 from 100 for qualified addiction physicians.
Obama wrote:
“My administration has been doing everything we can to increase access to treatment, but it won’t be enough without more resources from Congress” the president wrote. “That’s why I have called on Congress to provide $1.1 billion in new funding to help ensure that all Americans who want treatment for an opioid use disorder can get the help they need. Unfortunately, Congress has repeatedly failed to provide these resources. Congress needs to act quickly because lives are at stake.”
Mosley had a hard time believing the White House operators who called to let him know to expect President Obama’s response. (Apparently the letters can get thrown out as junk mail unless folks get a head’s up.) He was glad of the response, but concerned that the increased limit might only affect board certified addiction specialists, while he is primarily working with Family Practice physicians, who may not be affected by this change. I was glad to head President Obama is still on the job while on vacation, listening to everyday Americans and trying to address the problems they are bringing to his attention.
Obama visited Charleston WV recently in response to a letter about the effects of the heroin and opioid addiction crisis and held a town hall in October 2015, and he is continuing to work on this challenging problem for our state.
“Obama directed the CDC to invest $8.5 million in opiate addiction prevention and also will ask for a federal review of barriers to medication and treatment for opiate addiction.
One Charleston father in the Charleston audience asked Obama why his heroin-addicted daughter had to travel to Michigan for treatment because there were no resources available for her at home.
Obama told the man that the tide is shifting on drug policy to emphasize treatment for addicts. He called on Congress to approve his $133 million budget request for treatment and prevention programs.”
These are the programs that Congress isn’t funding while they go out and campaign to have Donald Trump lead their House and Senate majority to sit around and do little for our country. At least the CDC is actually able to make some changes in recommendations like those for suboxone prescriptions.
I can assure those suffering in Louisiana, there is a lot of background work needed to bring a President who has experienced so many death threats to an area of the country where he isn’t that popular. When Obama came to Charleston, there was tremendous security and lots of threats to respond to for law enforcement. It is easier to just fly over a flood in a military helicopter, but Obama will want to actually meet with folks and work for change to help people recover. None of this will matter unless he comes back and calls for a special session of Congress to deal with these floods (don’t forget us in WV!) fires and Zika epidemics.
On another note, I don’t know all the issues of suboxone treatment and the need to limit this prescription. Please feel free to share your knowledge of advantages and risks of these treatments as well as rapid response to overdoses with Narcan.
Just this Monday August 15 2016, I wrote a recommended diary about this crisis, reporting live that 26 persons had overdosed on heroin in 4 hours in Huntington WV. www.dailykos.com… I didn’t completely update the aftermath, which included discovery of two deaths, one in Huntington and another in Cabell County. So 28 total overdoses, two deaths and the toll keeps rising. The is some discussion locally that carfentanyl (a potent tranquilizer used on elephants) may have been lacing the heroin, since this popped up in Cincinnati with some overdoses leading to deaths in March this year.
To give you some perspective of the harms done by this epidemic, yesterday a young man and his girl friend injected themselves with heroin while driving their car down third Avenue and crashed into a tree on the 2600 block at 1 PM. There was a little child in the car who was injured. Both driver and woman passenger passed out at the scene from overdoses. Marshall University’s football stadium is on the 2000 block of Third Avenue, and we had 2000 new College First Year students here for Week of Welcome on Friday. So bad problems are still out there, and the peripheral damage is extensive. I am doing my best as an educator to work with those first year students to prevent addiction and discuss policing and judicial solutions to drug addiction. Prevention is critical, but so is effective treatment and counseling.
Please President Obama, don’t just visit Louisiana this Tuesday to offer some of your sincere comfort. Come prepared with a action plan. Call Congress back into session to deal with funding for the terrible flooding in Louisiana and West Virginia this summer, so we can rebuild. Ask them to address fires in California and the West as well the the emerging Zika Crisis in Florida. We need some clean bills to address these problems. Republicans won’t want to spend any money on this, like they didn’t want to spend money on Hurricane Sandy. Maybe we can stop subsidizing the oil and gas extraction industries to help pay for these problems.