Distribution of New York\u2019s $200m from pharmaceutical firms to combat the epidemic has stalled due to bureaucracy tie-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman on the phone had nowhere else to turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy son\u2019s going to be calling. I already lost two sons this year. Help him, because I can\u2019t have all three of my sons dying in one year,\u201d she pleaded with the addiction support centre in Buffalo, New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew Sikorsky, the director of rehab facilitation at Save The Michaels<\/a>, has taken his fair share of calls from the people hooked on opioids who have hit rock bottom, but this one hit particularly hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All three of the woman\u2019s sons were heroin users in their 20s and 30s. Two lost their lives to the latest wave of the US opioid epidemic driven by highly potent fentanyl laced into heroin, cocaine and other drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s hard. I wanted to help her but I said: \u2018We can\u2019t speak to you about him. You have to have him call and we\u2019ll help,\u2019\u201d said Sikorsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first challenge was to get the young man to call. The second was to find him a place in a treatment program amid a surge in demand and growing frustration at what critics say is the slow pace of New York state\u2019s allocation of hundreds of millions of dollars paid by the pharmaceutical industry as compensation for creating the worst drug epidemic in US history, while rehab centers and others cry out for money to provide more beds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prescription drug manufacturers and distributors agreed to pay the state more than $2bn to fund programs to counter the opioid crisis, which has claimed more than 750,000 lives over the past two decades. The money is New York\u2019s share of nationwide settlements<\/a> worth more than $55bn from 14 major pharmaceutical firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert Kent, a former general counsel for the New York state body responsible for distributing the funds, the Office of Addiction Services and Supports (Oasas), said that it received about $200m from the opioid settlements in the last financial year but little of it has reached organisations at the frontlines of the epidemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUrgency is everything. Get the money out the door. There\u2019s an immense amount of need and the numbers aren\u2019t going in the right direction. People are dying,\u201d said Kent, who went on to serve in the Biden administration\u2019s White House office of National Drug Control Policy for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI know from my work in the White House that the drugs are incredibly lethal. They\u2019re not going to get less lethal. In the budget year 2022 to 2023 there was over $200m that came to the state and none of it ended up being spent. They had to reappropriate that money in the budget that was adopted this year and add another couple of hundred million for this year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the beginning, local governments and groups campaigning for compensation, mostly run by Americans who lost relatives to opioids, insisted on binding guarantees that the money would go to combat addiction. They had one eye on the 1998 tobacco settlement which saw cigarette manufacturers pay US states $246bn for the health care costs of treating smokers. State governments diverted the money to pay for schools, build roads and fill gaps in their budgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In response, the New York legislature created an opioid settlement fund advisory board<\/a> to oversee the distribution of the funds and to ensure they were used to supplement, not replace, existing spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Avi Israel, founder of Save The Michaels, was appointed to the board. He rapidly became frustrated by the slow pace of action he blames on New York\u2019s governor, Kathy Hochul, for failing to convene the board for months and then Oasas for tying distribution up in bureaucracy. He said the delays are costing lives because people seeking treatment are liable to change their minds if they are asked to wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Save The Michaels is named after Israel\u2019s son, who was prescribed the opioid hydrocodone to treat Crohn\u2019s disease. Michael required ever larger doses of the drug to keep the pain at bay and became addicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel said his son sought help from a treatment centre but it could not find him a bed. Michael shot himself and died in his father\u2019s arms in 2010. He was 20 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen Michael called for help, and asked for a bed to go into inpatient treatment, it took his counsellor 5min and 47sec to come back and say there\u2019s no bed. And then he took his life. So our people all know that it takes 5min and 47sec to make a difference between life and death,\u201d said Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you can convince a person to go right there and then when they\u2019re ready, they\u2019ll go. If you ask them to wait, you don\u2019t know what will happen. As this demand is escalating, the state is not stepping up. Where is the access to treatment that needs to be available?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Save the Michaels has taken on more than 1,000 cases of people seeking treatment this year and placed about 800 of them in beds. But Sikorsky said more than 150 of those dropped out before they were admitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSometimes they call and they\u2019re coming off the drugs. But in the meantime, while we find them a bed, they find more drugs and they\u2019re happy again and go: \u2018I don\u2019t need treatment,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sikorsky was able to find a bed for the man whose mother called. But Israel said his organisation has seen a surge in demand that he attributes to the rising toll of fentanyl laced into much of the drug supply, although there has also been a rise in the number of people addicted to alcohol seeking treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never had a waiting list at Save the Michaels. Now we do. It tells you people are scared. They want to go into treatment. There are very few beds available in the state outside of New York city. Thank God that there\u2019s [a] couple of places in Pennsylvania that will take people, so we\u2019re sending people to Pennsylvania,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n