Scholar hoping to recast debate
Katharine Neill Harris thinks the conversation about the nation’s current drug crisis is being framed all wrong. Instead of talking only in terms of law and order, she says, the problem needs to be treated as one of public health.
Harris may get her wish in shaping policy thinking, at least in Texas, as she assumes a newly created position as a fellow in the Drug Policy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy.
Her position will bear the name of Alfred C. Glassell III, a Houston philanthropist who gave the institute $3 million to create it.
As part of the Drug Policy Program, she and its director, William Martin, will provide objective research to policymakers and the public in the highly charged political arena of drug addiction and prevention.
While certainly there is an element of law enforcement in the discussion, merely seeing it in those
terms is incomplete and can be counterproductive, she said in an interview Wednesday.
“We’ve seen from the war on drugs that targeting just those who sell drugs is not a viable solution,” she said, adding that often it can be a thin line between sellers and users who may be addicted.
She was referring to the sweeping initiative to combat drug abuse and distribution that started under President Richard Nixon but is most closely associated with efforts in the 1980s and ’90s. Under a system of mandatory minimum sentences, harsh penalties were imposed as a deterrent to curb the spread of street drugs, especially crack cocaine.
But then the winds changed and the wisdom of mass incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders fell out of favor. Only recently, under U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has the idea been resurrected.
In Harris’ new capacity, she will touch on topics and trends from addiction to the decriminalization of marijuana _ — an issue she fully expects will resurface in the Texas Legislature in 2019.
She said drug policy needs to be a collaborative effort between not only academic researchers, health providers and the criminaljustice system but also all elected officials. Her hope is to forge partnerships that could make Harris County a model for others counties in Texas.
Texas has been mostly spared from the ravages of the opioid epidemic that has struck other states such as Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.
A recent report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Texas doctors appear to hand out far fewer addictive painkillers than most other states. In parts of the Midwest, the Florida Gulf Coast, Appalachia and even the Pacific Northwest, per-capita opioid prescription rates are more than double the rate recorded in Texas, the report found.
Other reports by the CDC have shown that Texas also has fewer opioid-related hospitalizations than other states.
“Our overdose rates are lower,” acknowledged Harris, but she said Texas should not take the statistics to be the full picture. “I don’t think we’re immune.”
There are many theories as to why the drug death rate may be lower in Texas than other parts of the country. But Harris suggested that what seems like good news could be shielding another problem.
While Texans might not be turning to dangerous synthetic opioids like Fetanyl in the way people in other parts of the nation are, that is partly because there is still a ready supply of prescribed drugs.
She said she has been told Houston continues to have a problem with “pill mills” that churn out prescription painkillers. Drug-related deaths in the state are often underreported.
The disparity could also be partly explained by the weather.
One theory is that because of the Texas heat, people may be less likely to suffer from arthritis and that could lead to fewer prescriptions for painkillers.
Still, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently joined a group of state attorneys general investigating the marketing and sales of prescription painkillers, as they work to determine whether drugmakers have broken any laws.