CT_March-April_2022_Mag_Web

Health Care Special Session & Luncheon

Another insight he relayed was the change in production sites of these types of drugs. “Rarely do you have domestic labs who are producing methamphetamine. Its largely high-quality high-purity and pretty cheap meth- amphetamine coming from Mexico which is also driving up the diversity of some of the populations we are seeing use methamphetamine.” Another point Jones made regarding the annual survey results was about methamphetamine users use of other drugs in the past year and the amount of mental health challenges they face. “I think we do better in health policy when we take a more holistic and comprehensive approach rather than a single drug approach,” He related this finding to incarcerated popula - tion substance use and the mental health disorders prevalent in incarcerated populations. “With methamphetamine we found that about a quarter had serious mental illness defined as a serious enough problem to disrupt normal daily activities in addition to using other substances. When you think about it clinically how do we ad- dress this population. There is a lot going on there. How are we tending to these issues to help these individuals be successful? “he asked. He concluded by reminding the audience they are dealing with “complex individuals not just using a single substance as we think about how to treat and support recovery, we have to account for the other factors and other mental health or sub- stance use challenges they are experiencing.” Circling back to treatment data, Jones explained how a higher percentage of people are engaging in higher-risk drug use behavior. “We see the percentage of people coming in for treatment that are injecting has been increas- ing over the past decade. Its been a shift from smoking methamphetamine towards injecting. It’s

happening across all demographics and regions. This is concerning not only for overdose risk or suboptimal outcomes for substance use disorder treatment but certainly from an infectious disease perspective.”

“Less than one third of individuals who have a methamphetamine use disorder received any treatment in the past year.

It’s pretty consistent with what we see for opioids too.”

He cited past clusters of disease outbreak from higher risk drug use including an HIV outbreak in Indiana in 2015 and increases in Hepatitis C and other forms of viral hepatitis linked to higher risk behaviors. He also noted we have good viral dis- ease treatments but contrasted that with the wish we had more effective treatments for methamphet- amine substance use. Another point he made was about a theory among researchers that the increase in opioid in- volvement in overdose deaths that involve cocaine or psychostimulants is really a function of the drug supply. “So fentanyl is being mixed into cocaine or methamphetamine and people are being unknow- ingly exposed and that’s what is causing the rise in overdose deaths,” he explained. “That may be true for some people, however DEA tests show a minority of the samples of co- caine or methamphetamine involve fentanyl. Are the increases in overdoses a function of the drug

2022 Winter Conference He related one particularly disturbing finding: “Less than one third of individuals who have a methamphetamine use disorder received any treat- ment in the past year. It’s pretty consistent with what we see for opioids too,” he related.

52 — May/June 2022 Corrections Today