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From a reader who attended the Opioid Town Hall meeting at UNA:
Johnny Mack in one sentence confused methadone with methamphetamine. When a professor from UNA was touting the benefits and need for treatments like methadone & suboxone -- he cut her off and moved the conversation forward avoiding any conversation of the only approved treatment for this epidemic according to SAMHSA. Our illustrious Mental Health commissioner who has no clue what she is doing then acted like she didn't know what options were out there even though Shoals Treatment Center and HealthConnect both received grant money to address this epidemic locally.
This was a true political event for the people on the stage including the Attorney General who truly believes the only way to treat them is to incarcerate them and basically wants the cops to be the first receivers of funding to deal with this issue. I was floored and disappointed in the lack of ideas to help the situation and only a defensive attitude of those on the stage who think they know how to deal with it.
If you don't know the difference between methadone and methamphetamine you are part of the problem in this epidemic. You can't arrest our way out of it either...we've been doing that since the 70s...
Mental health is the fix because it's a disease and a nurse who worked in a psych ward for a short stint is not qualified to lead this fight.
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There are countless educational opportunities for professional level officials, legislators, and those in govt. But they don't WANT to be educated. Midern medical knowledge is frightening to them..They are happy to take a mid-20th century position in this illness, and not bother with state-of-the-art information and treatment options. I'd like THEIR physician to treat THEM with 1950s medicine and 1950s medical knowledge.
ReplyDeleteWell said. It's unacceptable that such public officials are unaware of what the CDC says is the "most effective treatment" and what the National Institutes of Health has deemed the "gold standard treatment" to address the opioid crisis. 100 years of the war on drugs has shown that we cannot arrest our way out of a public health crisis. Thank you for speaking up!
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