Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has made reparations for the financial and public health damage done by the opioid crisis a hallmark topic of his administration. From litigation to resource investment in harm reduction and treatment, Weiser has hung his hat on approaches that move away from treating opioid addiction as a purely criminal issue.
“This has got to be an all-hands-on-deck solution to address all the tools we can,” Weiser said last Tuesday, speaking at an opioid safety conference put on by the Colorado Hospital Association.
His office is currently part of two lawsuits against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, the company’s founders and owners. Hundreds of local governments, including a handful of states, have sued the family to get at members’ personal wealth for reparations that wouldn’t be accessible by only going after the company. Members of the Sackler family have been accused of moving their wealth out of the company to make the assets harder to reach in litigation.
Purdue Pharma is “a poster child for some of the wrongful conduct that took place,” Weiser said, referencing the company’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin and downplay of its addictive potential. In a news conference after his speech, he said while he couldn’t give exact terms of resolution his office wants from litigation, it has to include changes to business practices and money that can go toward substance abuse prevention, education and treatment.
But Weiser acknowledged resolution of the litigation could take years, and Weiser knows the state can’t wait for the end to have a road map for reducing harm caused by the opioid crisis. Weiser said the state needs to invest in resources for harm reduction and treatment instead of trying to address the crisis only on the back end through the jail system.
Addressing a question from an audience member, he said the idea of using money for public health approaches to substance use instead of incarceration doesn’t get pushback from the criminal justice system. Rather, the key sticking point is having enough resources that make alternatives to jail a reality rather than just an academic conversation, Weiser said.
“If you’re in Montrose today where there is no drug treatment, the DA there will say you can talk about diverting people to drug treatment, but we don’t have it, so it’s an academic conversation,” he said. “It’s not a real conversation. But once you create drug treatment in Montrose … you can see lowering the number of people incarcerated.”
But he does believe the jail system has a role in reducing harm from opioid addiction by increasing the availability of medication-assisted treatment in jails, since people who have to go through substance withdrawal in jail have an increased risk of overdosing when they leave. He said after talking to Alamosa County’s sheriff, he learned that about 90% of people in the county jail have opioid addictions.
In the news conference, though, Weiser didn’t commit to asking for a state legislative approach to codify medication-assisted treatment in jails. He said it’s necessary to understand all the barriers to county jails providing treatment before asking the legislature to fund it.
“If we think we need more state leadership money support, we’ll be sure to make the case for that.”
During his speech Weiser didn’t directly say he doesn’t support a supervised injection site in Colorado, but said he’d rather see other places such as Philadelphia test the idea first.
Advocates of supervised injection sites say they have public health benefits when people are not using drugs in the streets and can connect with treatment resources at the sites, but law enforcement concerns linger, such as public nuisance laws and whether the federal government could stop local governments from operating the sites.
“I’m a big believer in ‘laboratories of democracy.’ I’m also a big believer Colorado doesn’t need to be first to do everything,” Weiser said.
He also is skeptical of decriminalizing illegal opioids such as fentanyl and heroin to help with shifting resources from incarceration to treatment.
While it’s useful to monitor data on experiments decriminalizing substances, he said, he believes opioids should only be authorized by doctors who understand their proper use.
“I’m still pretty nervous about trying to decriminalize opioids as something that Colorado should do.”
—Julia Cardi