Recovery Advocacy News, Issues & Miscellaneous Musings (Dec 2022)
This was originally published for Hazelden Betty Ford’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
Curation with occasional commentary by Jeremiah Gardner
📺 WATCH: A special holiday message from Hazelden Betty Ford CEO Dr. Joseph Lee: “Thank you for your never-ending optimism, your boundless hope and the life-changing, lifesaving work you do every day.”
📕 READ: Check out the new national dashboard showing non-fatal opioid overdoses on a map. Updated data will be available every Monday with a two-week lag. The dashboard, launched by ONDCP, is designed to show patterns and inform the deployment of response efforts. It shows more than 180,000 people overdosed on opioids and survived in the past year.
☑️ TAKE OUR SURVEY: If you are part of the recovery community, Hazelden Betty Ford’s Butler Center for Research invites you to take 10 minutes to complete this anonymous survey by December 22. Enter the password hope to launch the survey. Your participation will help us develop programs and services to shape recovery for you and those who follow.
📕 READ: We’re excited to see SAMHSA publish a long-awaited proposed rule with changes to the federal privacy law, 42 CFR Part 2, that governs addiction treatment records. The changes — now open for a 60-day comment period — will help address structural discrimination in our nation’s healthcare policy for people with substance use disorders and mental health conditions. We are proud to be part of the solution, having advocated for the proposed changes for many years. Hazelden Betty Ford’s Emily Piper says the proposed rule is “a helpful step in the effort to integrate substance use care into the mainstream of health care and expand access to quality, coordinated care for millions of Americans.” Learn more in this nice synopsis by Third Horizon Strategies.
📕 READ: In other health data news, a new journalistic investigation highlighted how egregiously many telehealth startups share sensitive patient information to big tech companies — seemingly insulated from certain privacy laws and legal repercussions because they don’t provide health care but instead connect people to care.
📺 WATCH: At a special Betty Ford Center Awareness Hour event this month, we were fortunate to host an advance screening and discussion of the powerful new documentary “Attention Must Be Paid: Women Lost in the Opioid Crisis.” The discussion, facilitated by recovery advocate and three-time Olympic gold medalist Carrie Bates, was fantastic — featuring the film’s director, a woman whose story is told in the film, a researcher, and Hazelden Betty Ford’s chief medical officer. Watch the recorded panel conversation, focused on the need for more addiction and recovery services to meet women’s specific needs.
📕 READ: Under Colorado’s Maternal Overdose Matters (MOMS) initiative, hospital staff screen new mothers/gestational parents and then offer naloxone to take home. Good move.
📅 MARK YOUR CALENDAR: Every day in January, our friend Tommy Rosen will be on his yoga mat at 6am PT, and you can join him for a morning practice that will be healthy in every way. No cost — a new year’s gift he’s calling Wake Up 2023.
📕 READ: SAMHSA took steps to permanently lock in rules that made it easier to get methadone and buprenorphine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
📕 READ: Actress Jamie Lee Curtis says ‘the single greatest thing’ she can do for her legacy is remain sober.
📕 READ: A diet drug called tianeptine is banned in six states and has come to be known as “gas station heroin” in others.
📕 READ: Congrats to our friend Jeremy Drucker for being named the new Addiction & Recovery Director for the state of Minnesota.
📕 READ: Actor and comedian Russell Brand described his 20th sobriety anniversary as “a community and spiritual achievement.”
📕 READ: Congress directed the Bureau of Prisons to make suboxone and other medications widely available, but only a small fraction of those who need the help have received it, according to a new investigative report.
📕 READ: New York City launched a drug checking program to spot fentanyl before people overdose.
📕 READ: Another opioid settlement: CVS and Walgreens to pay combined $10.7 billion.
📕 READ: A lawsuit filed against the U.S. Army with the help of Yale Law School students claims the Army is violating veterans’ rights by refusing to give soldiers with alcohol and drug problems honorable discharges.
📕 READ: Three New York City nonprofits that provide substance use services were recently granted a license to sell recreational marijuana. Wow — sometimes irony can be pretty darn ironic.
📕 READ: The latest from journalist Ted Alcorn: As New Mexico lawmakers draft legislation to reduce alcohol’s harms for the upcoming session, new data shows alcohol-related deaths hit yet another high-water mark in the state already beset by the worst alcohol crisis in the nation. ALSO WATCH: Our interview with Alcorn.
📕 READ: A new BBC Two documentary features rare footage inside AA meetings thanks to new digital technology altering the faces of participants so they could remain anonymous.
📕 READ: Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy sounds off on alcohol’s dangers.
📕 READ: Interesting story about Managed Alcohol Programs in Canada.
📕 READ: The Kennedy Forum released a new brief: “Ensuring Coverage of Behavioral Health Emergency Services.”
📕 READ: The National Council on Problem Gambling says up to 80% of high school students may have gambled for money during the previous year and that about 5% of high school students should be considered addicted to gambling. Meanwhile, colleges are now cashing in on sports betting, having “Caesarized” campus life as the New York Times put it. Here too is a close look at the lobbying blitz that made sports betting ubiquitous.
📕 READ: Marijuana use among 6- to 18-year-olds has increased 245% since 2000, while child alcohol use has steadily declined over those years, say researchers who analyzed poisonings over two decades. Another new study found that states that legalized recreational marijuana saw an increase in alcohol consumption too — mostly among young adults and men.
📕 READ: The opioid epidemic is surging among Black people because of unequal access to treatment.
🎟️ GET TICKETS: Looking forward to, and proud to sponsor the 5th Annual Minnesota Wild Recovery Night!
📕 READ: Leaders from over 60 addiction treatment facilities participated in a gathering of programs serving as data sites for the NAATP Foundation for Recovery Science and Education (FoRSE) Addiction Treatment Outcomes Program.
📕 READ: STAT explains why fentanyl is making it harder for addiction doctors to start buprenorphine treatments.
📕 READ: We join others throughout the national recovery community in mourning the passing of Susan Broderick, founder of Building Bridges to Recovery.
📕 READ: According to a recent study, only 8.5% of 149,000 drug-related visits to emergency departments between August 2019 and April 2021 resulted in a prescription for buprenorphine or the overdose reversal drug naloxone for future emergencies. Seems nothing much as changed.
📕 READ: Mayo Clinic is researching opioid addiction treatment using what they call “mini brains.”
📕 READ: The New York Times editorial board makes the case for three bills floating through Congress that it says “could not only save lives and money but also help to finally dismantle the nation’s failed war on drugs.”
📕 READ: Actress Jodie Sweetin reflects on the value of publicly sharing addiction and recovery stories.
📕 READ: Nice headline in STAT: “When it comes to addiction, Americans’ word choices are part of the problem.”
📕 READ: New research sounds an alarm on the lack of access to post-discharge follow-up care for patients with opioid use disorder.
Jeremiah Gardner is director of communications and public affairs for the nonprofit Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.