Thanks! More soon...
mincho
Underfunding of breakthrough treatments for addiction and overdose—looking for help
Thanks Stan, I really appreciate it! I have several short articles that I’m writing covering various aspects of this and will reach out to get your feedback when I’m closer.
On question 3-- yes, I think there is reason for optimism that the new treatments under development can work, including vaccines, non-opiate painkillers, addiction reducers, etc. Il’l be writing about this very soon and also looking for experienced pharma folks for thoughts on pipeline to market timing and obstacles.
Whether these treatment will be game-changers or useful additions to our limited toolbox remains to be seen. And whether they will take 15 years to get to market or 5 is what I’m hoping to influence. But there are some human trials already in progress on exciting stuff.
totally agree—i think fentanyl is rightly understood as a huge a new threat, but i dont think there’s a realization generally that fentanyl is essentially a technological advancement. much stronger, much smaller, cheaper. makes efforts to prevent drug trafficking much harder and makes harm reduction and social interventions much more difficult as well. we beat cigarettes largely with price increases, fentanyl is a price decrease. also it has shorter half life than heroin so people use it more often every day, which creates all sorts of other risks. all of this is to say—yes, fentanyl seems more likely to spread to countries that have been ok so far.
OK, I will! Thanks!
Great, I’ll DM you and we can stay in touch.
My goal is to first build the case that the space is underfunded, and assuming that it feels convincing to me and others, try to push for more awareness and funding in the space. This could mean creating a formal or informal organization or it could just mean creating some kind of movement, momentum, etc. I’d love to get some of the leading researchers onto the popular health podcasts, help them create more powerful presentations for the public, talk to NIH researchers, politicians, and more. I think there’s a lot of low (and high) hanging fruit here.
But definitely starting humbly, trying to get the science and the facts right and going from there.
Thanks Toby! Could be perfect @tobytrem
Hi—I just posted a paid part-time research position for this project, in case you know anyone!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1STK_E23WneUAT416cKSruCWNVm4SNVI-yP58oSQOdIo/edit?pli=1
Hiring Part-time Researcher for Addiction Medication Policy Initiative
New org + substack focused on breakthrough treatments for addiction and solving market failures in drug policy
Quick update to let you know that we just launched a new substack: https://curingaddiction.substack.com/
Hope you will subscribe!
Thank you, these are very helpful!
Well the theory of change here actually includes the pharma companies in trying to develop treatments. I don’t trust pharma to do anything other than profit maximize, but I think the dynamics are such that this effort won’t be in opposition to their interests and the FDA has already clamped down hard on new medications with addictive potential.
The government probably should have put the Sackler settlement money towards development of non-addictive painkillers.
I certainly will! Hoping to get a substack going in the next month or so.