Obama gave a huge signal that the old 'War on Drugs' is over

• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is issuing a proposed rule to increase the patient limit for physicians who prescribe buprenorphine to treat those suffering from addiction to opioids. Buprenorphine has been heralded by doctors, drug policy advocates, and addicts as a life-saving drug that is indispensable in helping people come back from addiction. The proposed rule increases the limit from 100 to 200.
• $94 million in funding to community health centers to increase substance use disorder treatment services, especially those using the assistance of medications like buprenorphine.
• An additional $11 million in grants for up to 11 states to expand substance use disorder treatment using the assistance of medications.
• $11 million to help states buy and distribute naloxone, a life-saving drug that can reverse overdoses instantly. The grant will also help train first responders on the use of naloxone and other overdose-prevention strategies.
• HHS is issuing guidelines for programs using federal funds to implement syringe-services and syringe-exchange programs. Up until last year, syringe services programs could not receive federal funds.
• The formation of a new task-force aimed at ensuring private health plans offer comparable coverage for substance use treatment and mental health services as they do for medical and surgical benefits.
• A rule from HHS that ensures the same for Medicaid and the federal Children's Health Insurance Program.

REUTERS/Yannis BehrakisVicky, a 40-year-old, Canadian-born, Greek drug addict, injects herself with a narcotics cocktail known as speedball, a cocaine and heroin mix, on a central Athens side street April 30, 2012.

The plan comes on the heels of Obama's announcement in February that he was asking Congress for $1.1 billion in the FY2017 budget to help address the epidemic. That breaks down to: $920 million to expand medication assisted treatment, $50 million to expand access to substance-use treatment providers, and $30 million to evaluate the effectiveness of medication-assisted treatment. There is an additional $500 million allocated to expand prescription drug-overdose prevention strategies like access to naloxone.

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