Drug treatment that insists on abstinence? Federal agencies are just saying no
For as long as the federal government has worked to support substance use treatment, it has operated on a simple premise: Addiction medicine’s objective is to help people using drugs stop — completely and forever.
But with over 100,000 Americans dying of drug overdose each year, the Biden administration appears to be changing its tack. In recent years, key federal agencies have quietly but significantly opened the door to addiction treatment that, while still oriented toward eliminating substance use altogether, acknowledges that total abstinence may not always be within reach.
