ALBANY – Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to create recovery high schools aimed at helping students recovering from addiction finish their education while staying clean.
On Tuesday the governor rolled out a six-point plan that he says will combat every angle of the heroin and opioid crisis in New York State.
The proposal’s build on a legislative package he signed in June to increase access to treatment, expand community prevention strategies, and limit the over-prescription of opioids in New York. They aim to eliminate insurance barriers and further expand access to effective treatment, curb over-prescribing, and get fentanyl and other synthetic opioids off the streets.
The six-point plan put forward in Governor Cuomo’s State of the State address is outlined below:
- Eliminate prior authorization requirements to make substance use disorder treatment available to all;
- Add fentanyl analogs to the New York controlled substances schedule to subject emerging synthetic drugs to criminal drug penalties;
- Increase access to life-saving buprenorphine treatment by recruiting health care providers to become prescribers;
- Establish 24/7 crisis treatment centers to ensure access to critical support services;
- Require emergency department prescribers to consult the Prescription Monitoring Program registry to combat “doctor shopping”;
- Create New York’s first recovery high schools to help young people in recovery finish school.
Complete details of the plan can be found at the governor’s website.
A report by the State Comptrollers office released in 2016 suggested that heroin use in the state is exceeding national averages and that its death rate from opioid abuse is outpacing that of other states.
In 2014, overdose deaths in New York reached a record high of 825, a jump of more than 23 percent from the previous year and nearly 25 times the number from 10 years prior.
Overall drug overdose deaths in New York rose 144 percent from 2005 to 2014, compared to the national increase of 58 percent.
Deaths in the state in which opioids were a contributing factor rose to 43 percent in 2014, compared to less than 29 percent in 2005.
Ohio has the highest heroin overdose death rate, while New York ranked 19th in the nation in 2014 among the 43 states for which data were available.
Leave a Reply