So, in November, with the election of Donald Trump and the return of the Republicans to power to the congress, the question of how to respond to the best of opioid use disorder has been confronted with a new uncertainty. In the last decade, the push to expand access to the treatment for opiate addiction has enjoyed bipartisan support. But during his campaign, Trump outlined a draconian vision to face the problem of opiates, threatening drug dealers and smugglers with the death penalty and promising to “seal” the border. On February 1st, he signed an executive order to collect the rates against China, Mexico and Canada, in part to put pressure on these countries to stop the flow of Fenestanil in the United States. (Shortly thereafter, he gave 30 -day repories in Canada and Mexico.)
Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and Stanford behavioral sciences, who studies the opiate crisis, states that the idea that the control of the strengthened borders can stop or limit the flow of Fenestanil in the country is simply misleading. The Fenanil is so concentrated that the amount necessary to provide the demand of the entire country for a year is at a maximum of 10 metric tons, estimate. Law enforcement officers must find those 10 tons – the weight of a few cars – among the over seven million trucks that transport goods that cross the border every year. To significantly prevent Fenanil’s flow, think, you should completely close the border, at that point the country would inflict enormous economic damage on itself. And also with the closed edge, drones, planes and tunnels can easily continue to provide the market. A letter of size of the birthday cards sent from abroad could transport a week of opiate supply for someone. “You can’t really keep Fenanil out of such a big country,” he says.
Trump’s expression of Trump to cut government spending also worries supporters of the pharmacological treatment for addiction. Some Republicans are actively looking for ways to cut medicoid, together with other federal programs. Trump can also try to cancel or simply undermine the Affordable Care Act, a favorite goal. Both developments could be disastrous for the distribution of drugs for the treatment of opiate addiction, reversing the earnings, however soft, carried out pursuant to the Biden administration. Medicaid covers about 40 percent of non -elderly adults with opioid use disorder in the United States, a few two thirds of which they receive treatments for their dependence through the program.
It is also possible, however, that Trump will expand the public health approach he embraced during his first term, which was promoted by the Biden administration, and will continue to encourage the efforts to launch Mat Trump signed a law during his first Mandate that removed some requirements for doctors who wanted to prescribe the buprenorphine, observes Kassandra Frederique, executive director of Drug Policy Alliance, a non -profit organization that supports a less punitive drug policy. And uniquely among the Republican presidents, Trump has supported the use of some damage reduction practices such as making clean syringes available, according to its first term general surgeon. Frederique told me that he hopes that the current administration will continue to rely on work that Trump and others have done to expand access to treatment.
What is important to remember is how many evidence exist that indicate that buprenorphine can help people with opiate addiction. Sarah Wakeman often underlines it while rejecting against what he sees as a pervasive sense of pessimism around the opiate crisis. The problem is that this medicine is not reaching people who need it quite quickly. “Most people think that this is a terribly recalcitral problem, not negotiable, insurmountable,” he says. “It could not be further away from the truth.”