RESOURCES

Protocols for Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) in jails & prisons:

• MAT/ MOUD in Jails & Prisons: Policy Guidelines /Best Practices / Toolkits/ Research, Health Policy Network, April 2024
• Six Key Strategies to prevent MOUD diversion in jail-based programs  (JCOIN, 2022)

Civil Rights, the ADA, and Addiction

• Justice Department Issues Guidance on Protections for People with Opioid Use Disorder under the Americans with Disabilities Act,  (updated Nov. 2022) US DOJ Office of Civil Rights
•  To Protect People with Addiction from Discrimination, the Justice Dept. Turns to a Long-Overlooked Tool: The ADA, (June 2022) STAT,  Andrew Joseph
• MAT/ MOUD (medications for opioid use disorder) Advocacy Toolkit (Nov. 2022)  Legal Action Center 

 Drug-Induced Homicide Prosecutions 

• Charging “Dealers” with Homicide: Explained, The Appeal (2018) Jacob Siegal and Leo Beletsky 

 Fentanyl Policy

• Policy: Five Pillars of a U.S. Response to Illegally Manufactured Synthetic Opioids (Feb. 2022)  Related article: Synthetic Opioids are an EVERYTHING Problem (June 2022)
• A blue-ribbon, bipartisan federal commission spent 12 months studying the national crisis of deadly fentanyl poisoning made 21 recommendations, spread out among these “Five Pillars”: 

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 Policy coordination & implementation to include fixing outdated regulatory frameworks. 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

• A Greater Focus On Harm Reduction Will Save Lives, Health Affairs (2022) Bryce Pardo and David Luckey
• Considering Heroin-Assisted Treatment and Supervised Drug Consumption Sites in the United States, a RAND Research Report,  (2018) RAND Corporation, Beau Kilmer, et. al. 
• Pennsylvania State Policies
• And finally, there’s humor! Last Week Tonight’s with John Oliver’s Case for Harm Reduction ( YouTube: 18 minutes).                                            

  Justice System / Criminal-Legal System:

  • More Imprisonment Does Not Reduce State Drug Problems: Data show no relationship between prison terms and drug misuse (2018) Pew Research Issue Brief
  • Making Deflection the New Diversion for Drug Offenders, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law (2021) Kay Levine, Joshua Hinkle, Elisabeth Griffiths, 45 pp. Disentangling substance use services from criminal-legal control– focusing on helping people with low-level drug offenses before they are arrested or prosecuted.
  • Today’s fentanyl crisis: Prohibition’s Iron Law,revisited, International Journal of Drug Policy (2019) Beletsky and Davis (full text pdf)
  • We Can’t Arrest Our Way Out of Overdose: The Drug Bust Paradox, American Journal of Public Health (2023) Dr Nabarun Dasgupta’s editorial (pdf here) confirms a geographic correlation between opioid-related seizures by law enforcement (i.e. drug dealer arrests) and overdose deaths in the same neighborhood afterwards.
  • Study eferenced in article above: Spatiotemporal Analysis Exploring the Effect of Law Enforcement Drug Market Disruptions on Overdose, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2020–2021 American Journal of Public Health (July 2023) Ray, Korzeniewski, Mohler, Carroll

  Language: Substance Use and Addiction 

• The AP Style book updated its 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.
• Reporting on Addiction – resource for journalists, educators, and experts. Download their condensed style guide
• Language Matters in the Recovery Movement, Faces & Voices of Recovery. 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

• What Words We Use —and Avoid— When Covering People and Incarceration 2021, The Marshall Project, Nonprofit journalism about criminal justice
• The Prison Studies Project: Eddie Ellis asks for humanizing, person-first language, and to stop using the terms: offender, felon, prisoner, inmate and convict

 Opioid Settlement Funds 

• Primer on Spending Funds from the Opioid Litigation, A Guide for State & Local Decision Makers, Nationally Recognized Guidance.  Five Principles.
• From the War on Drugs to Harm Reduction: Imagining a Just Response to the Overdose Crisis. Expert Recommendations for the Use of Opioid Settlement Funds, (Dec. 2020) FBX Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard
• Evidence Based Strategies for Abatement of Harms from the Opioid Epidemic, (November 2020)
• Bringing Science to Bear on Opioids, Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health (November 2019)

Peer Support/ Recovery Support 

• Peer Support Services in Justice and Public Safety Settings – a Planning and Implementation Toolkit (Jan. 2023) The Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association (LAPPA)

Pharmaceutical Marketing

• PharmedOut Pharma Marketing Hub: links to fact sheets and summaries of articles, from the pioneering program by Adrian Fugh-Berman, MD, based at Georgetown University Medical Center 
• Model Act to License Pharmaceutical Representatives— Legislative language,  and a Q&A on Licensing, National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) July 2020 
• Big Pharma in the Overdose Crisis: A Former Drug Rep Speaks Out, Gail Groves Scott, TEDxLancaster 2021 – 16 minute You-Tube video, posted in 2023

Substance Use Disorders and Opioids

• Curated Library about Opioid Use for Decision Makers (CLOUD) Collection of resources that include: Substance Use, Addiction and Treatment, Recovery, Recovery-Friendly Workplaces, Peer Support, and Law Enforcement Diversion Programs 
• Opioid Crisis: No Easy Fix to Its Social and Economic Determinants American Journal of Public Health (2018) Dasgupta, Beletsky, and Ciccarone ( full text pdf ) Authors provide evidence supporting the need for policies addressing social and structural root causes of the overdose crisis, rather than our historic over-focus on supply-side interventions. 
•  Access to Evidence-Based Treatments for Opioid Use Disorder, Policy briefs, analysis & articles, O’Neil Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown Law
• The Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association (LAPPA): Model Laws, Research and Analysis on public safety, health, the criminal justice system and substance use disorders