The LuLac Edition #4,574, September 1st, 2021

 

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

Our “Write On Wednesday” logo.

This week we give you Shamrock Communication’s Editorial thoughts on politics and Harrisburg Republicans who seem hell bent on ruining public health, even when it comes to Opioid Abuse.

 LEGISLATURE OVERDOSES ON POLITICS

Pennsylvania ranks fifth among the states in overdose deaths and the overdose death rate, but legislative majorities in both houses have not detected an ongoing public health emergency in those grim statistics.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 4,377 Pennsylvanians died in 2020 from unintentional drug overdoses, with more than 75% due to opioids. The death rate for the year was 35.6-per-100,000 residents.

Yet the politics-addicted Republican majorities in both houses found recently found it more important to counter Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf than to agree to his request to extend the state’s public health emergency regarding opioids.

They did not explain why extending the emergency — which had produced highly positive results before the COVID-19 pandemic reversed them — and their impending legislative approach should be mutually exclusive given the urgency that the addiction crisis requires.

To lawmakers’ credit, they responded aggressively when Wolf first declared the opioid public health emergency in January 2018. The state government quickly lifted restrictions on the distribution of the opioid antidote naloxone, worked with the medical community to revise opioid prescription standards, developed a highly effective statewide system by which doctors and pharmacists could track prescriptions and prevent “doctor-shopping,’ and increased treatment access.

But they responded to Wolf’s management of the COVID-19 crisis by passing two constitutional amendments, and timing required statewide referendums for the low-turnout spring primary, to transfer emergency management from the executive branch, where it belongs, to themselves.

Today, on International Overdose Awareness Day, opioid addiction and overdoses remain a public health emergency even if the Legislature won’t acknowledge it as such.

When lawmakers meander back to the Capitol they should give higher priority to that emergency than to their political dog-and-pony show regarding the well-settled 2020 election.