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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.

