When you receive a scary diagnosis — for cancer, heart disease or other serious illness — one of your first calls is probably to a doctor who can offer the full range of evidence-based care. But if your diagnosis were for opioid addiction and you came to see me, an addiction specialist, federal regulations written half a century ago would bar me from prescribing the most effective treatment: methadone.
The U.S. lost more than 100,000 people to overdoses in 2021 in a crisis now dominated by fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. That’s more than twice the number of deaths at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1995. When officially tallied, overdose deaths in 2022 will also exceed 2020 levels.
Last month, the FDA made naloxone — the safe and effective drug that can reverse an overdose as it’s happening, of which Narcan is the best-known brand — available over the counter. If manufacturers set an affordable price, expanded access to naloxone could save countless lives. Expanded access to methadone would do the same.
