PORTSMOUTH, Ohio — Fentanyl. It’s the extremely potent artificial opioid driving a large surge in overdose deaths. Sen. Rob Portman, I believe it is a disaster we should face proper now. However the causes for this disaster, and what we will do about it, should not what you suppose.
I ought to know. I’ve misplaced pals to overdose, and practically died myself. I’m an Iraq Struggle veteran and a resident of Portsmouth within the Ohio River Valley. Once I returned residence from the warfare, I used to be keen to leap again into life as a father and reconnect to my neighborhood. Sadly, although I left the warfare, the warfare didn’t go away me.
With undiagnosed post-traumatic stress dysfunction making each second of my life a battle, I turned to opioids to make the times extra bearable. They usually had been, for a bit. Fairly quickly, although, the once-in-a-while OxyContin morphed right into a full-blown dependency on opioids.
But as debilitating as my habit was, my state of affairs was made exponentially worse by the criminalization of drug customers that our society has pursued for over 50 years, particularly focusing on poor folks and communities of coloration. I used to be arrested again and again and despatched to jail, however police and judges couldn’t cut back my dependence on opioids — as a result of I used to be coping with a well being concern.
It was solely because of the compassion and nonjudgmental help from a couple of key folks round me that I started to raised perceive what was taking place to me, and overcome my dependency. I used to be capable of get the help that has introduced me to the place I’m immediately: pleased, wholesome, and giving again to my neighborhood.
That’s what individuals who use medication want, and what saves lives: hurt discount; help; and remedy within the communities the place they stay. This implies entry to sterile syringes and drug testing kits, and types of medically assisted remedy (MAT) like buprenorphine so folks can transfer towards restoration. And for all of us, it means studying to manage naloxone, which may reverse an overdose in seconds and save a life.
These are the options I advocate for daily in Ohio in my work as a hurt discount supplier at River Valley Organizing, a part of the Individuals’s Motion nationwide community.
They’re additionally the options in two payments at present earlier than Congress: The Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act and STOP Fentanyl Act. Regardless of having extensive bipartisan help, these payments have stalled in Congress, stopping communities from having the instruments they should cease overdoses and save lives.
What doesn’t save lives? Sending individuals who use medication to jail. For lawmakers, that is the straightforward approach out — they inform voters they’re “robust on crime,” and hope they gained’t discover that criminalization has failed for many years to cease deaths from drug use.
That’s why, Sen. Portman, you have to abandon your name for the permanent classwide scheduling of fentanyl and related substances, and get behind the laws and options that heart on public well being approaches as an alternative. All that drug-scheduling does is ship extra individuals who use medication to jail — whether or not or not they knew they had been utilizing banned substances — slightly than provide them hurt discount and remedy.
Sen. Portman, we want you to work to go the MAT Act and STOP Fentanyl Act now, so lives will be saved, and in order that those that wrestle with medication can discover what they should heal. To do that will take compassion and braveness — from each one among us, and from lawmakers such as you — to create a world the place folks have entry to lifesaving care and the place everybody can thrive.
Justin Hanley is an Iraq Struggle veteran in Portsmouth, Ohio.
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