Biden Focuses on Opioids in Prescription Drug Policy Priorities

The Biden Administration recently released new prescription drug policy priorities that focus on addressing the opioid epidemic and reducing drug overdoses.

The priorities provide guideposts to promote evidence-based public health and public safety interventions. The priorities also emphasize cross-cutting facets of the epidemic by focusing on ensuring racial equity in drug policy and promoting harm-reducing factors. 

Biden’s drug policy priorities also include:

• Expanding access to evidence-based treatment
• Advancing racial equity issues
• Enhancing evidence-based harm reduction efforts
• Supporting evidence-based prevention efforts to reduce youth substance abuse
• Reducing the supply of illicit substances
• Advancing recovery-ready workplaces and expanding the addiction workforce
• Expanding access to recovery support services 

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) will work closely with White House components, agencies, and Congress to meet Biden’s drug policy priorities. 

Expanding access to evidence-based treatment includes supporting a broader array of treatment and recovery supports. 

During the first year, the Biden Administration will work through ONDCP to take initiatives in evaluating progress, reviewing policies, removing unnecessary barriers, developing and establishing a working group, urging extension of the opioid public health emergency, and exploring reimbursement. 

In the second priority, Biden emphasizes the need to advance racial equity in drug policies. 

Therefore, in the first year, the Administration will work to identify data gaps, establish a research agenda and an interagency working group, develop a drug budget, and direct agencies to begin collecting budget data.

Additionally, they will identify culturally competent and evidence-based practices and promote integration of the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS).

The third priority focuses on enhancing evidence-based harm reduction efforts. 

Harm-reduction organizations and other services are crucial for people who use drugs because they have the potential to connect at-risk populations to needed care.

The Biden Administration stated that they will work through ONDCP to integrate and build linkages between funding streams, explore opportunities to lift barriers, identify state laws that limit access, examine naloxone availability, and support overall research efforts.

The fourth priority focuses on supporting evidence-based prevention efforts to reduce youth substance use. Delaying use until after adolescence decreases the likelihood of developing a substance use disorder.

In the first year, the Administration, along with ONDCP, will use its budget authorities to ensure that prevention programs that receive federal support are using evidence-based approaches to deliver services.

Additionally, the Administration will conduct an inventory of prevention programs, identify opportunities for ONDCP’s drug-free communities support program, identify opportunities for prevention programming in communities with high rates of adverse childhood experiences, identify grants to other opportunities, and promote service delivery models for care.

In priority five, Biden focused on decreasing the supply of illicit substances.

Specifically, the administration will work with key partners to shape a collective and comprehensive response to illicit drug production, exercise leadership in regional and multilateral forums, strengthen the US government’s overall capacity, and support law enforcement efforts and multi-jurisdictional task forces. 

The sixth priority zoned in on advancing recovery-ready workplaces and expanding the addiction workforce. 

The Administration will first identify ways in which the federal government can remove barriers to employment and create employment programs for those in recovery from addiction.

Then, the administration will conduct a landscape review of existing programs, identify a research agenda and barriers to treatment, request agencies to support training for clinicians, produce guidelines for federal managers, and expand the workforce of bilingual prevention.

The final priority focused on expanding access to recovery support services.

The Administration will work with federal partners, state and local governments, and recovery housing stakeholders to begin developing sustainability protocols for recovery housing. 

Additionally, they will develop interagency support and engage individuals with “lived experience” in the development of drug policy.

“Addressing the overdose and addiction epidemic is an urgent issue facing the nation. The Biden-Harris Administration’s multi-faceted and evidence-based approach will meet this challenge by expanding access to prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery services, and reducing the supply of illicit substances,” the Administration concluded.