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Thursday, May 31, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan since 1890.
I
n 2016, it was estimated that opioid
overdoses killed more Americans
than the Vietnam and Iraq wars
combined.
The
Michigan-OPEN
website
which keeps track of roughly how
many opioid-related deaths occur each
day. At the time of writing this column,
the number stands at 115.
With hundreds of Michiganders
dying of opioid overdose every week,
you would think the state and local
governments would have a pretty
good handle on addressing this
devastating public health crisis. While
there are some effective government
interventions
available
to
help
Michiganders struggling with opioid
addiction, these efforts are not enough
and the patchwork of policies and
institutions to address opioid addiction
is a mess to navigate.
I have an internship at Workit
Health this summer, a telehealth
program that provides treatment for
opioid addiction. Recently, our clinical
operations manager and I sought to
find a source of free naloxone kits
for patients. Naloxone (brand name:
Narcan) can reverse an opioid overdose
and save someone’s life. It is available
without a prescription at places like
CVS Pharmacy; however, the cost
of a Narcan kit for someone without
health insurance is almost $100. In the
emergency situation of an overdose,
forcing a person’s friends or family to
fork over $100 they may not have is
both impractical and cruel. Access to
free or reduced-cost naloxone kits is not
only benevolent, but also makes fiscal
sense. According to a White House-
commissioned report, the estimated
cost of overdose deaths in 2015 was
$431.7 billion. That comes out to be
about $30,000 per death by overdose
shouldered by taxpayers. But what did
we find when we went in search of free
affordable naloxone kits for those at
incredible risk for death by overdose? A
lot of headache and no naloxone.
First, we called the Washtenaw
County Health Department and the
Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office.
They told us there was a service to
provide a free naloxone kit to those
who survived an overdose but not for
people who have yet to overdose. So
much for prevention.
Then,
we
called
our
state
representative’s office to see if their
constituent services desk knew about
the resource. The person on the line
did not know any places to find free
or reduced-cost naloxone kits but said
they would look into it for us and call
back. The staffer called back soon after,
giving us two numbers we could call.
We were excited to be on the right track
— that is, until we called both numbers.
They were disconnected.
Last summer, I experienced another
side of Michigan’s attempts to combat
opioid addiction as a pharmacy
technician at an independent pharmacy
in Detroit. Towards the end of my time
there, Michigan State Police raided the
clinic of doctor Mohammad Durrani
in Dearborn because he prescribed
more than 500,000 pain pills between
January and August 2017. The bust
spooked the physician in the clinic
attached to the pharmacy in which I
worked. In a panic, the physician began
to only write prescriptions for a seven-
day supply of opioids and a referral to a
pain management specialist regardless
of circumstance. This physician had
no real reason to be afraid of law
enforcement or of losing his license, but
his patients suffered, as they lamented
to us at the pharmacy, because of
their provider’s unnecessary, but
understandable, panic.
I — and many people more educated
and experienced in addiction care—
worry that coming down hard on
prescribers of opioids will limit the
flow of pain pills to patients who
might genuinely need them and risks
needless suffering for patients. This
may also push people from pain pills
to heroin, which is much cheaper and
easily accessible illicitly. Yes, opioids
have been over-prescribed (there are
more opioid prescriptions in Michigan
than people). However, indiscriminately
restricting access to opioids is not the
answer. Medicine has come a long way
in recognizing how to safely use pain
pills and patients who need them should
not be denied pain relief.
Michigan
communities
have
been devastated by addiction to pain
pills and heroin. At the very least,
state government should create a
central,
well-advertised
directory
for Michiganders looking to locate
resources like affordable naloxone kits.
State policymakers should also explore
policy to encourage more clinicians to
treat addiction with buprenorphine
and ensure that clinicians who are
prescribing opioids properly are not
afraid of arrest or loss of license.
ETHAN KESSLER | COLUMN
EMMA CHANG
Editorial Page Editor
EMMA RICHTER
Managing Editor
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Sarah Khan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
ASIF BECHER
Editor in Chief
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
ALI SAFAWI | COLUMN
An epidemic mismanaged
Ali Safawi can be reached at
asafawi@umich.edu.
Expand the franchise
A
s spring gives way to
summer,
first-round
campaigning has given
way
to
primary
elections,
which will soon give way to
final
elections
in
November.
Significantly low levels of voter
turnout in midterm elections and
among the American electorate
in general mean every vote will
count.
Over 6 million Americans,
however,
are
likely
to
be
excluded from this influential
swath of voters because of felony
convictions, with many states
offering
felons
little
chance
to actually regain the right
to
vote
after
imprisonment.
This exclusion occurs across
a surprising majority of U.S.
states, signaling a consensus
that has impinged on American
democracy for long enough. It is
time to categorically restore the
right to vote among felons who
have served their time.
Denying ex-felons the right to
vote may seem like a reasonable
measure, but at its core, it is
nothing less than an assault
on the backbone of democracy.
The practice most notably came
into prominence in the South
following
Reconstruction.
During this time, Southern states,
eager to return their legislatures
to a state of white dominance, set
about finding ways to eliminate
African-American votes. Felon
disenfranchisement
statutes
succeeded at reducing African-
American
voter
registration
relative
to
white
voter
registration in the South, taking
advantage of higher conviction
rates among African-American
people for many crimes.
Beyond its role in subjugating
African-American
people
to
the laws of Jim Crow for most
of
the
20th
century,
felon
disenfranchisement has damaged
America’s democratic foundation
by denying many citizens a voice
in choosing our leaders.
In
2018,
generations
after
voting discrimination by race and
by gender have been defeated,
it is easy to take suffrage for
granted. As citizens, however,
we must not forget that voting is
the preeminent method by which
citizenship is exercised. Without
suffrage, the power of the people
to choose their leaders – the
very dynamic that underpins
representative
democracy
–
ceases to exist.
It follows that the extension
of suffrage to more citizens
serves to better the government’s
representation of the people,
preserving
the
essence
of
representative rule. We do not
vote because we are citizens; we
are citizens because we can vote.
As long as this system of
government for and by the people
rests on the right to vote, voting
must be upheld as a fundamental
right. That is why voting, though
not explicitly mentioned in the
Bill of Rights, is constitutionally
protected. It is also why
restrictions on who can vote
have recently been narrowed
to exclude only those incapable
of full legal capacity – that is,
minors, convicted criminals and
the mentally incapacitated.
The
continued
application
of voting restrictions to former
convicts, however, invokes a
moral argument contradictory
to this established reverence for
voting. Allowing states to bar
ex-felons from voting because
those unwilling to follow the law
shouldn’t make the law, fails to
establish a strong relationship
between a legitimate state interest
and the disenfranchisement of a
narrowly tailored group.
This failure becomes apparent
when inspecting the relationship
between,
say,
the
legitimate
state
interest
of
reducing
violent criminal activity and
the commonplace restriction on
firearm ownership by ex-felons.
Convicted violent criminals are
more inclined to use weapons
for criminal purposes in the
future, so in this case, they must
yield their Second Amendment
protections to the valid state
Continue reading on page 5.
“Over 6 million
Americans,
however, are
likely to be
excluded from
this influential
swath of voters.