Doctors urge the Senate to vote on bipartisan legislation that would expand access to lifesaving buprenorphine.
The current Congress has one last chance to pass legislation that would lift a major barrier to opioid addiction medication and potentially turn the tide of the drug overdose crisis.
The Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act would deregulate buprenorphine, a gold standard medication for treating opioid addiction and preventing overdose. Harm reduction activists, physicians and a litany of medical associations have spent years pushing Congress and consecutive presidential administrations to nix the so-called X-waiver, which doctors are required to obtain from the Drug Enforcement Administration in order to prescribe buprenorphine.
Rates of fatal drug overdose were already on the rise when the COVID-19 hit and isolated drug users from friends, family and the limited number of doctors who have an X-waiver to prescribe buprenorphine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention foundin the fatal overdose data from 2020, particularly in areas with high levels of income inequality.
From 2019 to 2020, overdose deaths among white people grew by 22 percent after slowing in recent years, while overdose deaths among Black and Indigenous Americans exploded at roughly twice that rate — an increase of 44 percent and 39 percent, respectively. In 2021, drug-related deathsNow, physicians and activists are scrambling to pass the MAT Act in the Senate, where the bill has languished after passing within the House as part of a broader mental health reform package.
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