Programming note: We’ll be off Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day but will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday.
CASE STUDY IN TREATMENT: America’s sprawling network of more than 4,400 state prisons and local jails has emerged as a front line in the nation’s unrelenting opioid crisis, which killed more than 80,000 people in 2021 and has helped drag U.S. life expectancy to its lowest levels in a quarter century.
POLITICO’s Krista Mahr traveled to Maine to examine the state’s efforts to wean prisoners off dangerous drugs like opioids and prevent fatal overdoses by prescribing medications like buprenorphine and methadone.
About 40 percent of inmates across the prison system are administered drugs to treat opioid use disorder. Krista writes that the Biden administration is taking notice and touting the program as a model for the rest of the country.
Maine’s program offers voluntary medication and counseling to anyone in a state prison diagnosed with an opioid use disorder regardless of their release date…
