The opioid crisis in our country is a widespread problem, affecting families and individuals from all walks of life and backgrounds. So far, the Trump administration has not even attempted to provide a worthwhile policy or plan of action to deal with rising rates of opioid-related addiction and death. But while the opioid crisis has been widely viewed as a predominantly white American problem, researchers at the University of Michigan have published findings that it’s the treatment of opioid addiction that has been unequally centered on white people dealing with the epidemic.
The team of researchers looked into medical records of doctors prescribing buprenorphine for addiction treatment. Buprenorphine is an opioid drug that reduces cravings for more addictive and dangerous opioids such as heroin and fentanyl. Unlike methadone, buprenorphine is prescribed for patients to take at home and is therefore considerably more accessible and more adaptable in use. According to NPR, the researchers found that while rates between 2011-2016 of drug overdose deaths saw an exponential increase among black Americans, doctors didn’t write prescriptions in quantities that reflected that increase.
"White populations are almost 35 times as likely to have a buprenorphine-related visit than black Americans," says Dr. Pooja Lagisetty, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and the study's corresponding author.
One barrier is financial. According to NPR, only 5% of clinicians are trained and allowed to prescribe the drug. This means that those few practitioners can, and do, set their own prices and require cash payment.
What is true, Lagisetty added, is that most of the white patients either paid cash (40%) or relied on private insurance (35%) to fund their buprenorphine treatment. The fact that just 25% of the visits were paid for through Medicaid and Medicare "does highlight that many of these visits could be very costly for persons of low income," Lagisetty says.
Add to this the original marketing of buprenorphine to (white) suburban teens addicted to opioids, and the racial inequality in access to the drug is plain.
Among those in the Democratic presidential primary field, Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed laws that would hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their part in creating the opioid crisis. Sen. Kamala Harris has spoken to the need to decriminalize, or to move away from punishment to treatment of addiction to opioids and other drugs. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren has come out with policy proposals that would include the allocation of billions of dollars for treatment and outreach, and for research into what is a truly pressing public health issue.