[Prevscilist] Endorsement of a public health approach to drug addiction (rather than criminalization)

[Leslie Leve]

PREV community,

Please see below for a statement from Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), on the inequities caused by the criminalization of drug addiction—with inequities such as inequitable enforcement, ineffective punishment, inequitable access to treatment, the vicious cycle of punishment described. Dr. Volkow concludes with a commitment to a public health approach, with research “urgently needed to establish the effectiveness and impact of public health–based alternatives to criminalization” and “The US must take a public health approach to drug addiction now, in the interest of both population well-being and health equity.”

This shift in how NIH and NIDA think about substance use brings me hope. It is a privilege to see some of you conducting prevention science research directly in this space, focused on social, ecological, and contextual variables to better understand and help reduce (and ultimately eliminate) some of the inequities caused the US’s criminalization of substance use.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210421.168499/full/

Leslie


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Leslie Leve, PhD (she/her)
Alumni Faculty Professor, College of Education
Associate Vice President
Associate Director, Prevention Science Institute
Program Director, Prevention Science graduate programs
University of Oregon

Phone: 541-346-9601
Web: https://levelab.uoregon.edu/
 https://education.uoregon.edu/people/prevsci/leve
Member, National Scientific Council on Adolescence, https://developingadolescent.org/

The University of Oregon is located on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. Today, descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians of Oregon, and they continue to make important contributions in their communities, at UO, and across the land we now refer to as Oregon.





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