‘We still have a lot more work to do’ on opioid deaths
Legislators, health experts at Santa Fe summit see need to increase access to medication-assisted treatment
In the back corner of a meeting room at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, four battery-powered candles flickered on a folding-table altar to the dead.
Marigolds sat atop the black tablecloth, flanked by the faces of young men and women beaming from picture frames.
One woman wore her graduation cap and gown. A young man held a small child. And two dozen more names were scrawled carefully on a piece of paper, underneath words in looping script: “In Loving Memory.”
These were not just any loved ones remembered on El Día de Los Muertos, but those who have lost their lives to a national opioid epidemic.
It’s a catastrophe that drew hundreds of people, including the state’s leading physicians, advocates and legislators, to Santa Fe on Thursday for the 2017 Opioid Crisis Response Summit.
State epidemiologist Dr. Michael Landen told the audience that while overdose death rates have been relatively stable since 2008, “we still have a lot more work to do” as New Mexico deals with substance abuse among its residents.
Still, he expects New Mexico to fall from eighth-highest in the nation in 2015 to somewhere in the teens when the 2016 overdose data are released.
New Mexico was the first state in the nation to require law enforcement officers to carry the overdose reversal drug naloxone, and allows pharmacists to distribute the lifesaving drug without a prescription.
Data from New Mexico’s Prescription Monitoring Program also show the number of patients receiving opioid prescriptions from multiple providers has fallen in the
last year, as has the number of patients receiving high-dosage opioids.
One prominent theme that arose in discussions among legislators and health experts was the need to increase access to medication-assisted treatment — drugs that combat opioid dependence, such as buprenorphine and methadone — particularly in rural communities and for those who are incarcerated.
Rural parts of the state are at a disadvantage, Landen said, because they have higher overdose rates and lower access to treatment.
“We need a systematic approach to ensure that people in need of treatment can access treatment,” Landen said. “Too many people are falling through the cracks.”
Opioid treatment within New Mexico jails and prisons also came up in discussion. After inmates are released from prison, they have an “extremely high” risk of overdose, said addiction consultant Dr. Bruce Trigg, who added that he’s aware of only one jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque, that helps inmates get into addiction treatment programs. He said it’s rare when other New Mexico jails even allow inmates to con- tinue existing opioid treatment medication. Pregnant inmates, however, are an exception.
Brian Goodlett, executive director of New Mexico Treatment Services, which runs methadone clinics around the state, said his group would be happy to provide methadone for incarcerated people if it were allowed.
Democratic Rep. Deborah Armstrong of Albuquerque, chairwoman of the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee, said the issues — and solutions — discussed at the meeting helped set priorities for the legislators in attendance.
“I’ve seen the wheels turning for a number of legislators, who I imagine are going to try and get bills drafted,” she said after the meeting.
However, she added, she’s “not real hopeful” about increased state funding anytime soon.