RESOURCES

  • Protocols for Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) in jails & prisons:
 
HPN’s advocacy and education efforts in 2024 were successful in changing a counterproductive and stigmatizing policy that involved handcuffing patients daily while they received opioid use disorder treatment medications in Lancaster County’s jail. 

Civil Rights, the ADA, and Addiction

 Drug-Induced Homicide Prosecutions 

 Fentanyl Policy

 

  1. Demand reduction and public health that features harm reduction + expanding treatment and recovery supports.  
  2. Policy coordination & implementation to include fixing outdated regulatory frameworks. 
  3. Strong international relationships and cooperation are required. 
  4. Research and monitoring programs to fill the many gaps in our data and surveillance. 
  5. Supply reduction is the longest section, with a 6 requirements to disrupt supply. (None of which includes “border control” between the U.S. and Mexico, because that doesn’t work.)

 

Harm Reduction

Justice System / Criminal-Legal System 

  Language: Substance Use and Addiction 

  • The AP Style book updated it’s recommendations in 2017 on appropriate terminology, yet some journalists to this day are still using “addict” as a noun, or other language that elicits bias. We can all do better.
  • Changing the Narrative, the Action Lab at Center for Health Policy and Law: The Tired Narratives of Drug Policy: resources to accurately report on drug policy issues   
  •  Words Matter: Guide from the Action Lab. I recommend the RECOVERY DIALECTS “checklist” here, by Ashford, Brown & Curtis, Drug & Alcohol Dependence (2018). Their research showed that some terms used by people referring to themselves in private, like in a mutual aid meeting, did not elicit the same level of negative bias associated with stigmatizing terms used in public or by medical professionals
  • Reporting on Addiction – new resource for journalists, educators, and experts. Download their condensed style guide
  • Language Matters in the Recovery Movement, Faces & Voices of Recovery. Another source for the 1-page infographic RECOVERY DIALECTS “checklist” (2018) by Ashford, Brown & Curtis. 
  • Study Suggests Calling Myself an ‘Addict’ Is Different Than You Calling Me One (2019) Institute for Research, Education & Training in Addiction (IRETA), short essay by Jessica Williams

Language about persons who are justice-involved

 Opioid Settlement Funds 

Peer Support/ Recovery Support 

Pharmaceutical Marketing

Substance Use Disorders and Opioids