This story in The Fix claims that inmates in federal prisons are not getting medication assisted treatment (MAT) and that such treatment improves outcomes.
But hold on a minute. Inmates go cold turkey when they are incarcerated unless the prison has an active drug smuggling pipeline. So inmates clean up and are on no drugs during the term of their sentence. MAT, on the other hand, puts them on a pharmaceutical such as methadone, naltrexone or buprenorphine, which are categorized as opiates.
So despite claims that MAT is “Not Giving Drugs to Drug Addicts” that’s precisely what happens.
There are some things to be said for MAT, such as the user has a prescription and a pharmacy instead of a dealer in an alley, and usually the prescription is paid for by medical insurance or some sort of federal program, while the addict may hold up a liquor store for his fix. Aside from that, claims that MAT “improves outcomes,” is playing with definitions. They’re less likely to revert to their drug when released because they are full of another prescription opioid paid for by the taxpayer and produced by BigPharma.
The cold turkey inmate is more likely to go back to heroin for example, than a released inmate with a skinful of methadone, but methadone is much harder to kick than heroin, and “BigPharma,” the big legal drug dealer, gets the cash instead of “guy in alley” the little illegal drug dealer. So the “successful outcome” is comparing a guy clean of drugs who may revert, to a guy full of prescription opioids for the rest of his life who is less likely to buy on the street.
Now say you are BigPharma or a BigPharma investor. You are in pretty good financial shape because drug addiction is classified as “Substance Use Disorder” which like a few real diseases is incurable — at least according to the psychs. So the user is condemned to a life of prescriptions to treat his substance use disorder and that just means good times for BigPharma. Doesn’t mean MAT is bad, just that it doesn’t get an addict off drugs. It just switches him to another drug, so the “clean and free of drugs” outcome is not considered, because shrinks have decreed it is impossible.
