Gov. Inslee’s proposals to fight the opioid crisis in 2018

The contentious safe injection sites are not on Governor Jay Inslee’s list of initiatives to fight the opioid crisis.

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“This is a local decision,” Inslee told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “The local communities are making their local decisions. We are not going to dictate their local decisions.”

“I will tell you that talking to treatment professionals, the people on the ground will tell you that they think this can be helpful to get people into treatment,” he added. “You can talk to the people there and get them to understand that treatment is available … people tell me that when you have a location like that — where you can get those people in and talk to them — it can result in people getting off this opioid addiction.”

Fighting the opioid crisis

As lawmakers convene in Olympia, Inslee is proposing new initiatives to address the drug crisis in Washington state. He wants to implement a “hub and spoke” system that would allow every community access to medical expertise on the issue. He wants to establish statewide access to treatment. And he wants to make medication-assisted treatment more available in the state.

“This is a medical condition that people need treatment for,” Inslee said. “So improving access to medication-assisted treatment can be an effective tool for this … it’s not for everyone, but it gives physicians and patients an ability to choose options.”

“We also want to increase the reimbursement rates so we can have more physicians be willing to take Medicaid patients,” he said. “… we are only getting to about a third of patients today eligible for this treatment who are receiving it. There’s a lot of people out there who want treatment and aren’t getting it.”

The governor is also proposing a “suite of rules” aimed at reducing addiction via prescribed opioids.

Another thing Washington can do, according to Inslee, is making sure President Donald Trump doesn’t hamper any progress on the issue.

“The first thing we got to do is to stop the president and his party from taking away insurance coverage that is helping people get off this addicted behavior,” Inslee said. “We treated 30,000 people last year. This Republican effort to eliminate the health care reform would strip them of coverage … I hear Republicans say ‘We want to fight the opioid crisis.’ And I say, ‘Geez, don’t take health coverage away from them.’”

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