Address 'brain science' of addiction in new treatments, advocate says

On what was the USA’s National Overdose Awareness Day, trade group PhRMA carried a column from the chief executive of a non-profit organization on an addiction crisis that took 72,000 American lives last year.

Jessica Hulsey Nickel, the founder and chief executive of the Addiction Policy Forum, whose parents struggled with heroin use disorder, writes that expanding access to the opioid reversal drug, naloxone, will at least help to address the most acute symptom of the disease – overdose.

But she adds: “Naloxone will bring someone back to life, but it will not rebuild a life. We must support our emergency medicine providers to link these most vulnerable patients to treatment, and we must ensure that every evidence-based treatment is available, using all the tools in our toolbox to treat this illness.”