President’s opioid commission issues recommendations

President’s opioid commission issues final recommendations

The President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, released its final recommendations on how to fight the national opioid crisis on Nov. 1, 2017. According to the commission’s report, the country should increase federal funding and addiction prevention programs, expand federal drug courts and devise new law enforcement strategies to reduce opioid supply.

The commission issued 56 recommendations, which are available online. Here is a summary of a few of the recommendations:

Federal Funding and Programs

• Block grant federal funding for opioid-related and Substance Use Disorder (SUD) related activities to the states to allow more resources to be spent on administering lifesaving programs rather than on reporting. • Establish a coordinated system for tracking all federally funded initiatives and invest in only programs that achieve quantifiable goals and metrics.

Opioid Addiction Prevention

• Collaborate with states on programs to identify at-risk youth needing treatment. Deploy prevention tools for adolescents in middle school, high school and college levels. • Design and implement a wide-reaching, national multiplatform media campaign addressing the hazards of substance use, the danger of opioids, and stigma.

Prescribing Guidelines, Regulations, Education

• Develop model statutes, regulations, and policies that ensure patients understand the risks, benefits and alternatives to taking opioids for chronic pain. • Update guidelines for prescription pain medications. • Develop and disseminate a model training program on screening for substance use and mental health status to healthcare providers and prescribers.

Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) • Mandate states that receive grant funds to comply with

PDMP requirements, including data sharing, and fund

the establishment and maintenance of a data-sharing hub. • Increase electronic prescribing to prevent diversio, forgery.

Supply Reduction and Enforcement Strategies

• Utilize Take Back Day to inform the public about drug screening and treatment services. • Remove pain survey questions on patient satisfaction surveys so providers are never incentivized for offering opioids to raise their survey score. • Enhance federal sentencing penalties for the trafficking of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues. • Target drug trafficking organizations and other individuals who produce and sell counterfeit pills, including through the Internet.

Opioid Addiction Treatment, Overdose Reversal, and Recovery

• Remove reimbursement and policy barriers to SUD treatment, that limit access to FDA-approved medicationassisted treatment, counseling, inpatient/residential treatment, and other treatment modalities. • Broadly establish federal drug courts. State, local, and tribal governments should apply for drug court grants and divert individuals with an SUD who violate probation terms into drug court, rather than prison. • Implement naloxone co-prescribing pilot programs to confirm initial research and identify best practices. • Implement guidelines and reimbursement policies for recovery support services, including peer-to-peer programs, jobs and life skills training, supportive housing, and recovery housing.

Research and Development

• Review existing research programs and establish goals for pain management and addiction research (both prevention and treatment). • Fund and continue research to develop and test innovative medications for Substance Use and Opioid Use disorders.

Notable commission conclusion

“The origins of the current opioid crisis can be traced ... to a five-sentence letter to a biomedical journal in 1980, followed by other low-quality articles claiming that opioid narcotics are safe to use universally for chronic pain ... It also instigated the opioid pharmaceutical industry to embrace and exploit the flawed claims with aggressive marketing and ‘educational outreach.’”