The Governor's head of Health and Human Services, Marylou Sudders (@MLSudders), the medical director for substance use disorders at Mass. General Hospital, Dr. Sarah Wakeman, and President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Steve Tolman (@StevenATolman), discuss Governor Baker's 65 step plan to tackle Massachusetts' opioid epidemic.
"I think the most important game changer is that we need to see substance abuse as an illness," said Sudders. "This is a public health crisis...and we need to treat it as a chronic medical condition and we need to focus on public awareness, education, intervention, treatment and recovery. The entire spectrum."
During the press conference, Governor Baker cited Steve Tolman as the first person to start talking about this in a serious way. "I saw the devastation. I talked to the moms and dads...you saw the heartache in the households and one thing led to another," said Tolman.
"No patient that I see ever thought that they would become a heroin addict," said Dr. Wakeman. "Kids are now experimenting with pills the way they used to experiment with marijuana or alcohol."
