The Senate is advancing a legislative package to confront an opioid epidemic that’s killed hundreds of thousands over the past two decades. But as much as the Senate has hyped up the proposal, experts and advocates on the ground are worried that the bill simply doesn’t match the full scale of the crisis. 

“Many of these policies seem to be tinkering around the edges,” Dr. Leana Wen, the health commissioner of Baltimore, previously told me. “It’s not that they’re not helpful in some way,” she added. But what officials on the ground feel they need is “sustained, specific funding” and bolder, more sweeping guidance that will help build up long-term solutions.

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Shortly after Michael McMahon won Staten Island’s district attorney’s race in 2015, a young man collapsed on the street where he lived in the middle of the night. McMahon recounted this story and the approach he took as part of a panel organized by Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia Friday morning. The goal was to share lessons across cities, as Philadelphia wrestles with one of the nation’s highest overdose death rates amid a drug crisis that does not appear to be letting up.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings from Baltimore are working on legislation that requires the federal government to provide $10 billion to help fight the opioid crisis. The planned legislation was released Wednesday.

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When Surgeon General Jerome Adams issued an advisory calling for more people to carry naloxone — not just people at overdose risk, but also friends and family — experts and advocates were almost giddy.

But the drug’s price is an issue, said Dr. Leana Wen, the city’s health commissioner, and an emergency physician. She suggested that the federal government negotiate directly for a lower price, or give more money to organizations and agencies like hers so they can afford to maintain an adequate supply.

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An op-ed by Evan Behrle, Special Advisor for Opioid Policy at the Health Department and Dr. Leana S. Wen, Baltimore City Health Commissioner:

In Baltimore, we spend a lot of time training people to use naloxone, the antidote medication that reverses an opioid overdose. At these trainings, we talk about the opioid epidemic — what caused it and how it escalated so quickly. These explanations are often unnecessary. Our city’s residents know the opioid epidemic. It has taken people they loved.

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At the second annual March for Science, speakers here called for political action using science to inform some of the most pressing public health issues of the day, including the opioid crisis, gun violence, and ongoing funding of research for medical cures. 

Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana S. Wen, MD, gave an impassioned speech calling for more money toward the purchase of naloxone to treat more people who are addicted to opioids. Soon after becoming health commissioner in January 2015, Wen issued a blanket prescription for naloxone to all of Baltimore's residents. That program has saved more than 1700 lives, but there's still not enough of the medication to meet the need.

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With drug overdose deaths ravaging communities across the country, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are planning to introduce legislation Wednesday that would require $10 billion a year in federal funding to combat the opioid crisis. 

Cummings said he and Warren got the idea to fund a massive public health campaign against opioids from Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen and her staff, who pitched the lawmakers on the need for increased funding.

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Thousands on the National Mall on Saturday marched past the Environmental Protection Agency and to the U.S. Capitol to advocate for science to play a larger role in society — and stressed how research already ripples through a slew of issues from guns to immigration.

Leana Wen, commissioner of health in Baltimore City, spoke to the crowd about the realities of the opioid epidemic in her urban center today. Society needs to change how it views addiction, she stressed, adding "science shows us addiction is a disease, not a moral failing." 

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On a Baltimore street corner, public health workers hand out a life-saving overdose antidote to residents painfully familiar with the ravages of America’s opioid epidemic. But the training wraps up quickly; all the naloxone inhalers are claimed within 20 minutes.

“Every week, we count the doses we have left and make hard decisions about who will receive the medication and who will have to go without,” said Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, who issued the city’s innovative blanket prescription for the drug in 2015.

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The U.S. surgeon general wants more people to learn how to carry and know how to use the drug Naloxone, which can reverse the effects of an overdose. 

"The problem we have is not the policy, it's the price. Between now and July, I only have about 160 kits of Naloxone left to give out, which means that every day, I have to make a decision about who is going to get this Naloxone and who will have to go without," Wen said.

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