Five things Baltimore can teach us about fighting heroin (Cincinati Enquirer)

Wednesday Oct 12th, 2016

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Dr. Wen Cincinati Enquirer Video "Five things Baltimore can teach us about fighting heroin"

Lessons from Baltimore: The first in a four-part series.

BALTIMORE - This city is under an official public health emergency, and overdoses and drug use are the reasons. An epidemiologist has calculated 19,000 or 3 percent of its residents are addicted to heroin – important because here, officials just guess. Officials fight the epidemic with a multi-pronged, science-based approach that has specialists across the nation watching – and hoping.

"The city has a strong tradition of innovative approaches to dealing with heroin epidemic," said Dr. Adam Bisaga,  professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. "They have decades of experience building relationships with people who are using drugs," said Daniel Raymond, policy director for the national Harm Reduction Coalition in New York City.

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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