The Opioid Crisis: What Does Justice Require of Drug Policy

Opioids;Justice;Bioethics

Stenzel, RobertRieder, Travis ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: Opioids;    Justice;    Bioethics;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/60156/STENZEL-THESIS-2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

The American opioid epidemic has shifted in recent years away from its prescription painkiller roots and toward illicit opioids: heroin and fentanyl. The prohibition and criminalization of illicit opioids contributes to increased public health risks relative to prescription opioid painkillers, effectively amplifying the epidemic. Policy solutions will need to address the harms unique to illicit opioids. Using conceptual tools from Ruth Faden’s and Madison Powers’ theory of Social Justice as the moral foundation of public health, I contextualize the distribution of drug policy harms as contributing to health disparities among disadvantaged groups. This analysis informs policy recommendations to meaningfully address the illicit opioid crisis with special attention to addressing patterns of disadvantage. Policy interventions that fulfill the remedial and aspirational aims of Social Justice entail interrupting the unintended effects of Drug Control, i.e. decriminalization, regulation, and access. Non-ideal policies that operationalize discrete versions of decriminalization, regulation, and access to mitigate the harms of Drug Control are harm reduction policies. I conclude that a reasonable next step that ought to be taken in expanding harm reduction is regulating heroin via heroin assisted treatment within future supervised injection facilities or opioid substitution treatments.