AS OPIOID DEATHS MOUNT, OREGON LEADERS AND EXPERTS STAY THE LETHAL COURSE
Public healthcare funds will pay for more of the same failed approaches established as worsening the epidemic and that took Oregon to the bottom.
by Clark Miller
Published August 2, 2024
As described in a report from The Oregonian –
Federal officials have approved Oregon’s request to offer free Medicaid services for addiction and some other services to people who are on the verge of being released from jail or prison, something that’s prohibited by federal law. . . .
Inmates who meet Medicaid’s low-income limits will qualify for the program 90 days before their release from jail or state or tribal prison. They’ll be eligible for lab and radiology services along with mental health assessments and medications to treat opioid addiction and mental illness. . . .
Approval of the program follows passage of House Bill 4002 by the Oregon Legislature. The law directs $211 million toward tackling addiction, including building new diversion programs for those who are charged with possessing a small amount of illegal substances. It also includes $10 million to screen people in jail for opioid addiction and to treat them with medication so that they can stabilize their lives and continue their recovery when they’re released. . . .
“I’m thrilled with the approval of the Medicaid waiver, which will provide long-term sustainability to continue and expand opioid medication treatment in our jails,” Marsh told the Capital Chronicle. “These services are critical if we want to break the cycle of addiction, criminality, and incarceration — and to save lives in that process.” . . .
“Expanding access to life-saving treatment and recovery supports for incarcerated people is a critical part of our bipartisan efforts to beat the overdose epidemic and save lives,” Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said in a statement.
No less an expert and authority on treatment for the opioid crisis than our government’s director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a medical doctor, highlighted that this type of increase in Oregon to “access to life-saving treatment and recovery supports” is critical “to beat the overdose epidemic and save lives”.
What could possibly go wrong? That has to feel reassuring as a clear prediction that after decades of free-fall to a lethal bottom among U.S. states, things in Oregon will change and reverse now with this important step to provide pre-release inmates with the medical opioid cure buprenorphine (Suboxone) along with other “recovery supports” of the type already in place in Oregon, like peer support.
Who can help but to be thrilled at the certain outcome of an approaching reversal of longstanding lethal trends in the crisis with the provision of more medical cure?
Except . . .
It turns out, as explained and established here in multiple posts, that precisely as in the avoidable – avoidable if not for the cowardice and gross incompetence of American Media – generation of the opioid crisis as we know it enabled by fabrications by America’s medical/research/media collusion there has never, not ever, been a legitimate body of research evidence to confidently establish, let alone strongly support, the use of substitute opioids (bupe or methadone) as treatments or as beneficial for opioid dependence.
Instead, all lines of diverse evidence point to what should be obvious – the runaway dispensing of opioids that are routinely used with other, illicit opioids (methadone), and/or serve as consumable, commodity and currency in street economies of illicit high-risk opioid use (bupe) have in fact fueled the lethal epidemic.
The most potent ways in which the “miracle” doctor-dispensed pills and other magic potions predict failure is to instill in compulsive substance users the beliefs that passive interventions to adjust brain chemistry are “treatments”, are addressing a generic neurobiological block or deficit or disease of the brain that explains addiction, instead lethally instilling passivity, dependence and lies, and robbing compulsive substance users of the necessary factor established as central to stopping problem use, self-efficacy, the shift to belief in one’s own competence, autonomy, strength, and effective use of resources with inner psychological change to do away with the compulsion to escape distressing inner states by use of chemicals.
The desperate rationalizations to explain the predictably increasingly lethal crisis – including that if only not for COVID pandemic effects and if not for scarce availability of expert proven cures, then associated illness and deaths would be declining – are exposed as lies, here, and here, here, here, and here, for example.
That, despite the best efforts, rewarded by attention and pats on the head, of an army of useful idiots constructed as “journalists” and health writers, engaged to disseminate the necessary, lethal fabrications.
The evidence?
Here’s the most recent on effects of provision of buprenorphine pre-release for prison populations, the approach soon to be implemented in Oregon.
Go ahead and read that post now.
It’s important and provides the predicted outcomes for Oregon’s “new” (= decades old, lethal, increasing provision of street currency for fentanyl, buprenorphine), approved program to expand dispensing of the lethally failed medical cure.
In public health, failure to learn from lethal outcomes is a problem.
In this post published 5 months ago, Oregon’s state-of -emergency expert plan to increase dispensing of the established street currency for fentanyl by first responders was predicted to worsen the crisis, based on evidence like this from the February 2024 post –
The OPB report neglects to mention that the buprenorphine, ‘bupe”, users will be hooked up with is among the most common drugs traded on the street, currency for fentanyl and other high-risk drugs, plentiful and cheap. But even better when that currency for “real dope” is free.
In the similar program in New Jersey, it was “not what researchers expected” for the free, doctor-dispensed opioid to have no positive treatment outcomes.
It is exactly what was expected by any adult mind paying attention to American Medicine’s increasingly lethal opioid crisis.
As were the results, explained here, in Escambia County, Florida, where similarly EMS staff successfully inducted overdosers into MAT programming, with a supply of free “bupe”, and with a 19 percent increase in opioid overdose EMS calls the following year.
Expected as well in North Carolina, where beginning in 2018 EMT responders began transporting opioid overdose subjects to “rehab” over a period when buprenorphine MAT services were rapidly expanding for Medicaid and uninsured persons.
Predictably, with increased dispensing of the street currency for illicit opioids of abuse, opioid overdose visits to EDs mounted over the ensuing years.
And as predictable in Houston, Texas, where beginning in 2017 paramedics, outreach workers, others worked post-overdose with high-risk opioid users to connect them to Suboxone provided through a MAT program. Over the years 2018 to 2023, lethal opioid overdoses per 100,000 persons in the area approximately doubled.
Four similar programs, in
New Jersey
Escambia County, Florida
North Carolina
Houston, Texas
each with the predictably lethal outcomes.
Back to our current post –
How did Oregon fare with the predictably lethal approach?
That’s described here in the follow-up post, with reports pointing to a continuing or worsening surge in opioid deaths despite intensifying efforts to stem deaths including by emergency revivals.
The very helpful media spin credited Oregon’s political/expert class with achieving “increased collaboration between bureaus” and helpfully messaged that,
“There’s more work to be done and we all know that, and I want you to know that the state will continue to be a key partner in the work here in Portland,” said Gov. Tina Kotek at a press event on May 3. . .
“No, we weren’t going to successfully eliminate fentanyl in the 90 days, but we were going to get a better plan,” said Graves on Friday. “Now, the communications are being made, plans are being discussed on how we can enact a better response to address the fentanyl crisis in our community.”
The evidence?
Here’s the most recent on the effectiveness of the gold standard medical cure about to be expanded in Oregon, from the massive $344 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) study results recently released, predictably providing incontrovertible evidence of lack of benefit, instead increased high-risk opioid use and deaths.
In Oregon, leaders and experts are thrilled with their plans, including to further increase dispensing of the street currency for fentanyl – Suboxone – following predictable, accumulating evidence and new research results of its failure to provide benefit to high-risk opioid users releasing from prison.
That may not be the course Oregon Measure 110 voters had in mind when they were promised more effective treatment and fewer deaths.
