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 The plan, unveiled early last month, focuses on treating addiction,
including $7.5 billion to support state and city treatment programs,
emphasizing treatment over prosecution for low-level drug offenses
and equipping all first responders with the drug naloxone, which can
reverse opioid overdoses.
"Those states, those cities that are stepping up are going to get
the funds," under the plan, Clinton said in Boston on Thursday. "I
hope that will serve as an example, because we’ve still got some
denial going here."
Addictions affect some 23 million Americans, or about one in every
14 people, according to federal data.
"There’s treatment for one in 10, so when you do wake up that
morning and you do decide that you want to go and get some help,
you're lucky if you can find a place," Clinton said.
Clinton has said she seized on addiction as a key issue after
hearing questions about it repeatedly while talking with voters on
campaign stops.
The change in focus towards steering low-level addicts to treatment,
rather than prison, is a welcome one, said Dr. Jeffrey Samet, a
specialist in clinical addiction research at Boston University's
School of Medicine.
"Nothing gets achieved by putting them into jail," Samet said. "Many
of them, not all, but many, want to stop using as much as we want
them to stop. Putting them in jail, most of them won't use while
they are in, but once they're out, they start using again."
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Abuse of opioid drugs is a particular problem in the northeastern
United States, following a pattern where a patient is prescribed a
painkiller, turns to illicit sources of that drug and later
progresses on to heroin, which is cheaper and more widely available,
experts said.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a recovered alcoholic, said he hoped that
the focus on addiction would lead more resources to be devoted to
the problem.
"This would never have happened five years ago," Walsh said,
speaking alongside Clinton in Boston. "Today this is a major focal
point and will be a focal point in the presidential election."
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican and former federal
prosecutor, has also pointed to treatment as a smart way to tackle
the problem.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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