By Agatha Pacheco
The Seattle Times
After Shannie Jenkins’ son, Kyle Brinton, 31, died from a heroin overdose in October she wanted people to know about the reality and stigma of the opioid crisis.
Jenkins appeared with Gov. Jay Inslee at a round table in January where he and other government officials discussed legislation to combat opioid abuse.
“Nobody hates addiction more than the addict himself, seeing the shame,” Jenkins said in an interview last week.
Two companion bills, Senate Bill 6150 and House Bill 2489, requested by Inslee, aim to fight addiction by treating it as a medical condition rather than a choice. The bills would create four new networks to connect communities and providers to a “hub” that provides medication-assisted drug treatment.
The bills include an array of other initiatives, such as making the overdose-reversal drug naloxone widely available to anyone regardless whether they have a prescription, and expanding the state’s opioid prescription monitoring program beyond emergency rooms.
“It’s very complex and it requires a multiprong solution,” Dr. Kathy Lofy, Washington state’s chief health and science officer, said of the opioid crisis. “There’s not an easy solution that’s going to make this go away.”
The bills would require the Department of Social and Health Services to promote medication-assisted treatment such as methadone, naltrexone and buprenorphine at all state-certified opioid treatment centers. The medications are designed to help people to avoid elicit drugs and prevent relapses.
The bills also would implement a first-in-the-nation initiative to provide medication-assisted treatment to offenders in jail.
The program would cost $8.9 million a year to implement with an additional $1.7 million coming from marijuana taxes, according to the governor’s proposed supplemental budget.
HB 2489 had bipartisan support and was voted out of the Appropriations Committee unanimously on Friday.
The bills would remove language from state law that suggests people with opioid-use disorder should use other alternative treatments like abstinence from drugs before seeking medication-assisted treatment.
Opioids are now the leading cause of accidental deaths in the state, according to the Department of Social and Health Services. In 2016, some 694 opioid-related deaths occurred in Washington.
Jenkins, who said she used to think drug addiction was a choice, said she wishes she would have known that it was better for her son to stay on his medication than go completely drug- free.
Brinton struggled with opioid disorder for 10 years. For the last two years, Jenkins said, he was leading a normal life while taking Vivitrol, a drug that aims to prevent relapses in people who have gone through detox. His father was paying for the medication, and Brinton decided to stop it and was being monitored by his parents.
He was doing fine, but then relapsed and overdosed on heroin, Jenkins said.
“If you have to be on it, it’s better than death,” she said. “You’re not going to be cured of this disease. It’s always with you.”
