The policy I chose was Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) was has awarded $123 Million in grants for a multifront approach to combat the overdose epidemic. I find this to be a very good cause. In the past year, overdoses have risen by almost 31%, which I am sure is a direct result of Covid. During the lockdowns, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous were not operating on an in-person group therapy model that so many addicts rely on. Like many other things, they were forced to do zoom and some addicts depend on the face-to-face model. One thing they preach in the meetings is not to isolate yourself because that could become dangerous, yet they were forced to isolate and not receive the face-to-face support so many of them rely on day in and day out.
There are six different approaches including in this grant, two of which are coming to Illinois. Obviously, I wish they could go all throughout every city in the United States but I guess in the eyes of some, not enough people have died in order for there to be more on the ground action. One of the approaches that is reaching Illinois is “Medication Assisted Treatment for Prescription Drug and Opioid Addiction (MAT-PDOA)”. These grant funds will help to expand the medicated assisted treatment (MAT) services in Chicago. The goal of this grant is to increase the number of people who get MAT services and decrease the illicit opioid use/ prescription abuse. The state of Illinois is also receiving money for First Responders and community members at the state and local government to be accurately trained to administer Narcan, and help to refer people to treatment and recovery support services.
As stated earlier, I do wish we could see some more on the ground support for not only the ones in active addiction but funding to treatment centers and recovery programs. While I whole heartedly love seeing bills and funding come through grants like these, I would always like to see more. I think they are sometimes pushed to the side because people are uneducated on addiction, but if we could just reach even 30% more of addicts it would make a big impact.
Here is the link for the SAMHSA website, https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/202109130300
The page mentions that some programs will get funding for five years, and that makes me wonder if the $123 million is only the amount to be released in 2021. For example, ten tribal entities will be getting $331.2 over five years (averaging $6.6 million per year per tribal entity). Also, is the $123 million a significant increase over what was granted in 2020 or 2019? With 93,000 drug-related deaths in the past 12 months, I hope this is a significant increase.
The scope of the problem calls for more investment than $123 million, but the page mentions that there was also a release of $250 million to community behavioral health center back in July, and there would be $1.5 billion for the Community Mental Health Services Block Grant program and another $1.5 billion for the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant program. Would $2 billion or even $3 billion be more reasonable figures for funding those block grants, given the magnitude of the problem and the cost in human lives lost?
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