How Biden’s New Opioid Initiative Could Create More Drug Addicts – By Joseph Simonson (Washington Free Beacon) / Apr 15 2023
White House set to make naloxone available over the counter. Experts say it won’t help the opioid crisis.
A key component of President Joe Biden’s effort to combat the opioid crisis could backfire and lead to both an increase in overdoses and demand for narcotics, experts warn.
The White House is making naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, available over the counter. Public health experts say the policy is not only a tacit admission that deadly opioids such as fentanyl are here to stay but could end up creating more addicts or causing more overdoses.
“This move doesn’t address our addiction crisis in the slightest,” said Dr. Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor who has helped craft drug policy in multiple White Houses and in the United Kingdom. “You would never say ‘Okay, I’m rolling out a new plan for cancer for the country, we’re going to open a lot more hospice facilities.'”
The policy change was revealed on Tuesday as part of an initiative to crack down on illicit fentanyl supply chains. It comes amid bipartisan criticism that the Biden administration has largely overlooked the drug crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives over the last decade.
