The President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis released their final report to the President and federal agencies. The report contained 56 recommendations that the Commission proposes to overcome the opioid epidemic.
The report was broken into categories of:
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Federal Funding and Programs
- Instructed Congress and the Administration to issue block grants to states for opioid and SUD-related programming.
- Encouraged the upgrade of Office of the National Drug Control Policy funding tracking.
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Prevention
- Proposed prescribing regulations and education.
- Prescription Drug Monitoring Program enhancements.
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Opioid Addiction Treatment, Overdose Reversal, and Recovery
- Encourages federal agencies, such as IHS, to lift reimbursement and policy barriers to treatment.
- Instructs the national, state, local and tribal stakeholders to begin using medication-assisted treatment (MAT) with pre-trial detainees and post-release.
- Recommends the National Health Service Corp to supply health services to states and localities with higher than average opioid use and abuse.
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Research and Development
- Recommends federal agencies to look at existing research on pain management best practices.
- Recommends further research and funding for monitoring technologies.
The report offers suggestions for Tribal governments to strengthen surveillance, increase the use of medication-assisted treatment in pre-trial detainees and post-releases, and encourages tribes to apply for drug court grants. A large portion of the document offered a report on the statistics and rate in which the opioid crisis effects specific populations. Although Native Americans were concluded to be one of the most widely effected groups, the report did not address the data disparities that skew the accuracy of the data. This is to say that the data reported in the text is most likely drastically under representative of the accurate numbers.
Rather than suggesting direct funding, the commission suggested allocating block funding reserved to the states.