As opioid crisis spreads, treatments remain underutilized (Daily Record)
Tuesday Aug 29th, 2017
The opioid epidemic raging across the country recognizes few boundaries. Its victims are young and old, the highly educated and high school dropouts, rich and poor, women and men.
Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen said that one of the many obstacles to overcome in treating opioid misuse is the pernicious stigma that attaches to drug addiction. It isn’t a moral failure, but rather a chronic malady that should be treated and managed with the same level of attention as diabetes and heart disease are.
A solid step toward addressing the issue is to first stop people from dying, Wen said. In the past two years, the city has helped train some 23,000 people how to use Nalaxone, a prescription medication that blocks or reverses symptoms of opioid overdose. She said the training has helped save over 1,000 lives.