“In my experience, 99 percent of people don’t understand that,” Banta-Green said. Meanwhile, local buprenorphine programs are already reaching full capacity, he said, showing the need for expanded access to buprenorphine, methadone and other treatment medications. Law-enforcement o cers can be community leaders, he said, in destigmatizing addiction and building grass-roots support for more treatment facilities. Steve Redmond, a Seattle police o cer, said he works on it every day. Addiction “is a treatable medical condition no di erent than cancer or multiple sclerosis,” said Redmond, who was on a panel with Larsen and Banta-Green. He founded a volunteer-run crisis response and referral network, Code 4 Northwest. He also is a board member of Not One More, a community group that aims to destigmatize addictions and support people with them. e Seattle police and re departments were represented last year on a Seattle-King County heroin and prescription opiate task force, Larsen noted, and endorsed its recommendations calling for expanded treatment and safe consumption sites. It’s a positive development that many state rst-responders now carry the overdose-reversing drug, naloxone, Banta-Green said. But he’s concerned naloxone is viewed by too many public-safety o cials as the silver bullet, the best they can do to help. “It is a one-hour rescue,” he said, with modest impact.
FOCUS MORE ON TREATMENT, NOT ILLEGAL SUPPLY, SOME EXPERTS SAY A two-day summit on Washington’s opioid epidemic focused on reducing the supply of legal drugs. But some panelists wanted to stress a di erent approach: destigmatizing addiction and advocating medication-assisted treatment.
focus in life. “ e opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it’s connection,” he said. Abstinence and tough-love approaches don’t address the underlying trauma or conditions that lead people to addiction. “Too many people are clinging to old ideas which are downright dangerous in this eld,” he said. Medications such as buprenorphine or Suboxone can alleviate the pangs of drug dependence while not making people feel euphoric or disoriented, he said. at can allow them to work and have relationships and seek treatment for underlying conditions such as depression. “Nancy Reagan was wrong,” said Seattle Fire Department Capt. Jonathan Larsen, a summit panelist who supervises about 70 paramedics who respond to overdoses. “ is is a changed brain,” Larsen said about opioid addiction. “Medication-assisted treatment works. Nothing else works or we wouldn’t have the problem we have now.” But most people remain unaware that relatively new treatments such as buprenorphine reduce fatal overdoses and support recovery, said Caleb Banta-Green, senior research scientist at the UW’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.
An “opioid summit” convened by state law-enforcement agencies this week focused largely on reducing the illegal supply of opioids in Washington. And while armed o cers roamed the University of Washington summit and speakers addressed topics such as how to get maximum prison time for dealers, another thread emerged. Several law o cers, and others, spoke about the importance of viewing opioid addiction as a medical condition that should be destigmatized and treated with medications proven to reduce deaths and help people lead functional lives. “I really believe in medication-assisted treatment,” said King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, who devoted most of his 90-minute talk Friday to advocating a di erent approach than reducing supply, which has not historically succeeded.
Satterberg noted that most people who are drug-dependent lost connection with a positive
-KING COUNTY PROSECUTING ATTORNEY DAN SATTERBERG
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