For years, I’ve reported on the drug-related deaths, diseases and losses that have resulted from the opioid crisis. Life expectancy in the United States has dropped two years in a row for the first time in more than 50 years, largely due to overdose deaths. While various groups of medical professionals and advocates have tried their best to fix the problem, the death count continued to rise. So I wanted to know what it would take to end a drug crisis.
With the help of a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, I spent a week and a half reporting in France and Switzerland, two countries that have a lot of experience dealing with addiction. A few decades ago, many European countries dealt with similar spikes in heroin use, overdoses and high rates of HIV and Hepatitis C infections. Countries such as France and Switzerland took radical approaches to solve their opioid crisis and cut death and infection rates drastically.
While in Europe, I observed innovative harm-reduction programs unlike anything I’ve seen in my previous reporting. Some of their approaches are not legal in the United States. The Swiss embraced solutions such as drug consumption rooms and full access to an array of treatment options, including prescription heroin. After that, drug overdose deaths dropped by 64 percent, HIV infections dropped by 84 percent and home thefts dropped by 98 percent. With the help of interpreters, I talked to addiction psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, social workers, educators, policy influencers, chemists and drug users.
In France, the harm reduction strategies are not quite as cutting edge as in Switzerland. Instead the French work to support drug users through full-service harm reduction centers that offer wrap-around services, such as clean needles, medication-assisted treatment, counseling, medical treatment, hot showers, laundry machines, life skills classes, and places to sleep.
This series has been of interest to thousands of people, as the stories continue to trend on our website almost a year later. Stories from this series were the top most-read stories for NC Health News in 2019. The series even got the attention of an official from the U.S. State Department who read it. We were able to meet and talk about international drug policies and what the U.S. could take away from Europe. He was quoted in a later follow-up story to the series.