July 28, 2017 – Opioid Treatment

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Anchor lead: The US attorney general has revealed a crackdown on some opioid treatment centers, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Imagine seeking help for your opioid addiction, only to be sent off to an out of state treatment facility where bogus treatment practices are employed. That’s been the sad reality for some, and now the US attorney general has revealed a crackdown on such centers. Eric Strain, an expert on drug dependency at Johns Hopkins, says many treatment centers do fine work, but some caveats are in order.

Strain: Clearly there are programs now that are catering to providing services, and we’ve seen these on television ads late at night. This is where family members need to be careful, I think we need to watch what is the outcomes that these programs can have, to ask them for data on their outcomes, to look at how long these programs have been established. There are certainly residential programs that have been in existence for literally decades that have good track records of success, can point to those track records and are established in the community.  :32

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.