Push for local drug policies
Surgeon general opposes broad decriminalization but wants change
Illegal drugs shouldn’t be decriminalized nationwide, but the system for classifying them should be reexamined, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said at a national law enforcement summit on the opioid epidemic in Boston yesterday.
“Just as we need to look at our criminal justice laws, we need to look at our health laws and regulations, and that includes the scheduling system,” Adams told a gathering of 400 police from 32 states and Canada hosted by the Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative.
Researchers are having trouble studying the medical potential of marijuana, for example, because of the drug’s classification, he said.
Although both medical and recreational marijuana are legal in Massachusetts, under the schedule for controlled substances kept by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, it still is classified as a “Schedule 1” drug — the same classification for LSD and heroin — because it has no “currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” according to the DEA’s website.
“Our scheduling system is functioning, but not as ideally as it could,” said Adams, who was appointed by President Trump last year after serving as Indiana’s State Health Commissioner under then-Gov. Mike Pence, now Trump’s vice president. “Things aren’t static. We have to continue to evolve.”
But Adams said he opposes decriminalizing all drugs, a path some European countries have tried.
“I don’t think it’s the federal government’s place to decriminalize drugs across the board,” he said. “I don’t personally think it makes the country safer.”
Instead, Adams said, local jurisdictions should set policies that are right for them.
“Local control and local innovation is what I’m all about,” he said. “What works in Boston, Mass., isn’t going to work in Dallas, Texas, and vice versa.”
Adams said he has focused on prevention, education and the use of the overdose antidote naloxone in fighting the opioid epidemic, which claimed the life of one person every 11 minutes last year.
For him, it’s a very personal fight because his own brother is incarcerated for crimes he committed to support his addiction, he said.
Adams told of taking his two children to see their uncle in prison, both because he “wanted them to see the full consequences of opioid misuse” and because he wanted his brother to see that they still love him.
“Four out of five heroin users report getting addicted through a prescription opioid,” he said. “Addiction is not a moral failing. It’s a chronic disease.”
And there is hope, said Adams, who called police “critical” to eliminating its stigma, using naloxone to save lives and helping to get people into treatment.
Chelsea police Capt. David E. Batchelor said he used to think, “All our resources are after the fact, but … why aren’t we doing something to prevent it from happening?”
In 2015, a Canadian group trained him and others in Chelsea in a multiagency approach to community safety and well-being.
Since then, the Chelsea Hub has helped about 400 people by bringing together local police and 14 other agencies weekly to discuss high-risk cases, Batchelor said.
“When you have everybody in a room every week,” he said, “you start breaking down those silos.”