Often, advocates like Malish must navigate a maze of state and local laws, fierce local opposition, and hostile law enforcement. Regina LaBelle, who served as acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy until November, credits the Biden White House with being the first presidential administration to openly embrace harm reduction to curb drug overdoses.
She said that the $30 million, tucked into the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, is still just a first step and that too many groups rely on an unstable patchwork of grants.
“You shouldn’t have to hold bake sales to get people the care that they need,” said LaBelle, who now directs an addiction policy program at Georgetown University. Plus, the administration faces limits on what it can do when programs face blowback from state legislatures and local leaders. “What you don’t want to do is have the federal government coming in and imposing something on a recalcitrant state,” she said.īoth Republican- and Democratic-led states have legalized aspects of harm reduction, but many remain resistant.īy 2017, all states and Washington, D.C., had loosened access to naloxone, according to Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research. Yet fentanyl test strips - which help people avoid the powerful synthetic opioid or take more precautions when using it - are illegal in about half of states.
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