{"id":1500640,"date":"2024-11-06T00:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1500640"},"modified":"2024-11-06T00:20:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T05:20:00","slug":"california-takes-controversial-approach-to-fentanyl-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/california-takes-controversial-approach-to-fentanyl-crisis\/1500640\/","title":{"rendered":"California Takes Controversial Approach To Fentanyl Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

California Takes Controversial Approach To Fentanyl Crisis<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Beige Luciano-Adams via The Epoch Times<\/a> (emphasis ours),<\/em><\/p>\n

By now the statistics are familiar: Fentanyl is killing Americans at an unprecedented rate\u2014around 73,000 annually.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

For those aged 18 to 45, it is the leading cause of death.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s everywhere\u2014tainting counterfeit pills, poisoning children and adults, addicts and first-time users, overwhelming any potential response. As a deluge of pills and powder flows across the southern border, authorities regularly seize enough fentanyl to kill everyone on earth, several times over.<\/p>\n

Into this carnage, a windfall.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nationwide, more than $50 billion is expected to flow from legal settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors over the next two decades\u2014with California in line to receive about $4 billion, divvied up<\/a> among the state and local governments.<\/p>\n

This money will now largely go to abating illicit fentanyl\u2014the third wave in an opioid crisis that began with prescription pain medication in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

In the first two years, California\u00a0state programs<\/a> have primarily used their share for \u201charm reduction\u201d efforts<\/strong>\u2014including opioid overdose reversal medication, needle exchange, and public education campaigns aimed at destigmatizing drug use.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nationally, experts and progressive advocates are keeping a close eye on settlement spending, in an effort to avoid mistakes<\/a> of Big Tobacco settlements and ensure funds go to actual abatement, rather than plugging municipal budgets.<\/p>\n

But some wonder if another obvious lesson from the fight against Big Tobacco<\/strong>\u2014in which stigmatization, graphic warnings about the dangers of cigarettes, and enforcement led to a radical decrease in smoking\u2014is missing from the state\u2019s approach to the fentanyl crisis.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s Department of Public Health recently gave a San Francisco-based advertising agency $40 million in opioid settlement funds to produce a youth awareness campaign<\/a><\/strong> that aims to \u201cmeet people where they are\u201d by reducing stigma around using fentanyl and other drugs and encouraging the use of naloxone.<\/p>\n

According to state records, the department has also paid<\/a> that same advertising company nearly $900 million to produce campaigns that expressly stigmatize tobacco use and encourage abstinence from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, there is a strange contradiction between [California] Public Health trying hard to stigmatize tobacco smoking while destigmatizing fentanyl use,\u201d Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, told The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n

By now, Humphreys said, the lessons from Big Tobacco are clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisapproving of smoking has been a life-saving thing. And we should not be afraid to say to people that using fentanyl is incredibly dangerous and you shouldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

An anti-smoking poster issued by the California Department of Health Services adorns the back of a Los Angeles Metropolitan bus. Hector Mata\/AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Harm Reduction Movement<\/h2>\n

Harm reduction is a social justice movement that seeks to reduce drug harms without judging, punishing, or even interfering in drug use. It is an explicit pendulum swing away from the War on Drugs of past decades, which state leaders continue to\u00a0criticize<\/a> as a \u201cfailed\u201d approach.<\/p>\n

Many who are critical of the harm reduction movement in California, where it is orthodoxy\u2014baked into\u00a0the law<\/a>\u2014support harm reduction measures like naloxone distribution, medication-assisted treatment, and needle exchange.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where people tend to disagree is whether hard drugs should be decriminalized and destigmatized, whether those using and selling them should be penalized when they break the law\u2014and especially, whether treatment can be coerced or, as many harm reduction advocates insist, can only happen when and if the person who uses drugs decides they are ready.<\/p>\n

Humphreys supports harm reduction measures as part of a comprehensive, multi-pronged approach to the addiction crisis, and champions naloxone. As chair of the Stanford-Lancet Commission, he helped develop a national model<\/a> for opioid response that recommends overdose rescue medications as \u201cbroadly the most lifesaving action policymakers can take.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he recognizes the limitations and has\u00a0criticized<\/a> the trend, prominent in blue cities, toward de-stigmatization of hard drugs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNo one stops using drugs because of Narcan,\u201d Humphreys said, citing recent\u00a0research<\/a> showing those successfully treated with naloxone\u2014the overdose reversal medicine sold under the brand Narcan\u2014have a 13-fold increase in mortality compared to the general population.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwelve percent of people are likely to be dead from their addiction within 12 months of getting the Narcan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, poses for a photo in Stanford, Calif., on Aug. 29, 2016. Marcio Jose Sanchez\/AP Photo<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Further complicating the equation is the fact that non-opioids such as the \u201czombie drug\u201d xylazine<\/strong>\u2014which does not respond to naloxone\u2014is\u00a0showing up<\/a> in nearly 30 percent of all fentanyl powder seizures, and there is no long term research indicating how effective naloxone is after repeated use, or the impact of increasingly higher doses needed to reverse synthetic opioid overdoses.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, naloxone has a shorter half-life<\/a> than many powerful synthetic opioids\u2014including nitazenes, an \u201cemerging threat<\/a>\u201d in the U.S. drug supply\u2014meaning people can re-overdose after revival.<\/strong><\/p>\n

California\u2019s current fentanyl awareness campaigns elide the ugly realities of using fentanyl\u2014or meth, which in Los Angeles County\u00a0last year<\/a> killed nearly as many people\u2014in favor of a\u00a0message<\/a> that works \u201cin alliance with people who use drugs for safer and managed drug use.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are no photos of children who died from a single dose, no acknowledgement of the people suffering what amounts to a living death on the streets,<\/strong> no testimony from people who have recovered from their addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see one ad in here that says anything about treatment,\u201d noted Gina McDonald, co-founder of Mothers against Drug Addiction and Deaths (MADAAD), a San Francisco-based nonprofit critical of California\u2019s permissive approach to fentanyl.<\/p>\n

\u201cI eradicated my risk of overdose by stopping doing drugs\u2014it\u2019s the only foolproof way to prevent overdose. You would think that would be in at least one ad,\u201d said McDonald, a former addict.<\/p>\n

According to 2024\u00a0statistics<\/a> published by Mental Health America, a national nonprofit, nearly 83 percent of Californians with a substance use disorder, around five million people, did not receive needed treatment.<\/p>\n

Narcan nasal spray sits in a vending machine by the DuPage County Health Department at the Kurzawa Community Center in Wheaton, Ill., on Sept. 1, 2022. Scott Olson\/Getty Images<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Nationally, only Illinois has a higher rate of untreated substance use disorder than California.<\/p>\n

McDonald co-founded MADAAD with other mothers who have lost children to the streets\u2014mothers with children currently addicted to fentanyl in places like the Tenderloin and Skid Row.<\/p>\n

Their children are the intended targets of the state\u2019s advertising campaigns\u2014and the presumed beneficiaries of\u00a0funds<\/a> from a prescription opioid crisis that seeded subsequent heroin and fentanyl epidemics.<\/p>\n

McDonald, like most everyone, wants to see Narcan everywhere\u2014in every school and workplace and store\u2014and knows what the shame of addiction feels like.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying we need to stigmatize drug users,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut how many times are people going to be Narcan-ed and go back to die another day? It\u2019s usually what happens,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know too many people who\u2019ve been Narcan-ed on the street and went into treatment after being resurrected. … Narcan isn\u2019t dealing with any root cause of why people are using drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representatives from influential policy organizations that advocate harm reduction and opiate\u00a0decriminalization<\/a>\u2014including the National Harm Reduction Coalition and OpioidSettlementTracker.com\u2014did not respond to inquiries.<\/p>\n

Gina McDonald holds a poster of herself and her daughter at a protest in front of the Tenderloin Linkage Center in San Francisco on Feb. 5, 2022. Cynthia Cai\/The Epoch Times<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

An Empathetic Conversation<\/h2>\n

Robert Marbut, the former executive director of the U.S. Interagency on Homelessness and producer of the forthcoming documentary, \u201cFentanyl: Death Incorporated<\/a>,\u201d says the government is under reacting to an existential and continually evolving threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe absolutely have to get into drug education and prevention at a level that we did with cigarettes,<\/strong>\u201d he told The Epoch Times, pointing to the nearly 75-percent reduction in smoking since 1965, when nearly half of Americans smoked; now around 12 percent do.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Those campaigns] said cigarette smoking is not cool\u2014it\u2019s dirty, it\u2019s ugly, it\u2019s awful. If you go look at the PSAs, they didn\u2019t go into a sort of kinder, gentler thing. It was hard. It was direct\u2014it was: \u2018This is nasty. It\u2019s horrible.\u2019 And governments backed it up with real fines,\u201d Marbut said.<\/p>\n

Generally,\u00a0harm reduction<\/a> advocates say a softer, empathetic approach is needed to avoid the stigmatization and punitive tones of the War on Drugs. They argue shaming or scaring people who use drugs will prevent them from seeking help.<\/p>\n

Representatives of Duncan Channon, the ad agency behind California\u2019s \u201cFacts Fight Fentanyl\u201d campaign,\u00a0say<\/a> they avoided the \u201cfear and tragedy\u201d of traditional PSAs in favor of an \u201capproachable and empowering\u201d way to talk about the fentanyl crisis and get people comfortable using naloxone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing we are going to do is wag a finger at anybody or follow the failed tactics of \u2018Just Say No,\u2019 which has never really worked<\/strong>,\u201d Duncan Channon\u2019s CEO Andy Berkenfield told\u00a0AdAge<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state strongly believes\u2014and we are very much in line with them\u2014that our job is to engage in empathetic conversation and ultimately reduce harm,\u201d he told the industry publication.<\/p>\n

Fentanyl de-stigmatization campaigns are common across the United States, and California\u2019s opioid-settlement-funded \u201cUnshame CA\u201d campaign<\/a> reports \u201cmeasurable changes\u201d in moving the needle on public perception of substance use disorder as a medical condition and naloxone as an everyday resource.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here…<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 11\/05\/2024 – 19:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/medical\/california-takes-controversial-approach-fentanyl-crisis<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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