Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, August three. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration wants to reform state drug laws and
Speaker 1: focus on what's called harm reduction, which promotes safe drug
Speaker 1: use instead of abstinence and threats of jail time. The
Speaker 1: Office of National Drug Control Policy will be promoting draft
Speaker 1: model laws that supports harm reduction programs, increased treatment options,
Speaker 1: and reform criminal statutes. Dan Vergano, science reporter at BuzzFeed News,
Speaker 1: joins us for this and also how a cape cod
Speaker 1: covid outbreak, mostly in unvaccinated people, prompted the CDC to
Speaker 1: change its mask wearing guidance. Thanks for joining us Dandy
Speaker 1: area to talk to you. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of interesting things. First off, I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about the Biden administration and you know what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do to reform state drug laws. They're looking
Speaker 1: at something called harm reduction measures. This focuses on safe
Speaker 1: drug use over abstinence and the threat of imprisonment, which
Speaker 1: is kind of you know what we've been going through
Speaker 1: with the War on drugs type of thing. This is
Speaker 1: would be a shift away from that. So tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what harm reduction is and
Speaker 1: then what the administration is doing about it. So harm
Speaker 1: reduction has been around for you know, thirty years or more.
Speaker 1: It's basically the idea that you try, instead of throwing
Speaker 1: people who use a list of drugs in the jail,
Speaker 1: that you sort of meet them what they're where they're
Speaker 1: at it. They're going to use drugs, and you try
Speaker 1: and help them do that as safely as can as
Speaker 1: you might give them drugs that reverse overdoses, or you
Speaker 1: might show them how to safely inject, you know, and
Speaker 1: if it's the risk of an overdose from a drug,
Speaker 1: or you might you know, give them clean needles to
Speaker 1: use instead of old ones so that they don't spread
Speaker 1: HIV or hepatitis. And you know, the hope is that
Speaker 1: people you know, eventually at the time will go into recovery,
Speaker 1: but you don't force it on them. You try and
Speaker 1: sort of, just as they say, meet them where they are.
Speaker 1: And so these approaches obviously, you know, I can I
Speaker 1: can already see a lot of people not happy with
Speaker 1: them because you're not eliminating that drug use, right, You're
Speaker 1: still people would say, you're still promoting that drugs, but
Speaker 1: with some of these programs, is getting into recovery. Is
Speaker 1: that part of these programs? Yes and no. If you
Speaker 1: talk to someone in harm reduction, they say, no, we're
Speaker 1: not going to force people to do that. You can.
Speaker 1: It turns out, though, that if you're wise and you
Speaker 1: just make friends with people essentially show them we're trying
Speaker 1: to help them, that they're more likely to go into
Speaker 1: it on their own. It's sort of a person's own
Speaker 1: personal decision, like when they've decided to do this or not.
Speaker 1: And it just turns out that human nature being what
Speaker 1: it is, that it's better if the person makes a
Speaker 1: decision for themselves rather than you're putting a gun into
Speaker 1: their head and saying you've got to do this. That
Speaker 1: it turns on it just doesn't work. So we've been
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of numbers recently. More than people died
Speaker 1: of drug overdoses last year. That's the highest number we've
Speaker 1: ever seen. A lot of that has to do with pentomyl,
Speaker 1: which you and I have talked a lot about forty
Speaker 1: times more potent than harrow and and it's kind of
Speaker 1: leaking into other drugs. It's being mixed into other stuff.
Speaker 1: So what is the administration trying to do. What's the
Speaker 1: latest action that they're trying to do with all this, Well,
Speaker 1: what we reported today was that they are trying to
Speaker 1: promote model laws for states that would enhance the idea
Speaker 1: of harm reduction. And that is in response to this
Speaker 1: increases overdoses. And where what's going on is Fentyl has
Speaker 1: infiltrated the heroin supply, an illicit drug market west of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi as well as east of it, so you're,
Speaker 1: you know, basically doubling the area of which people are
Speaker 1: exposed to this. And during the pandemic, it seems clear
Speaker 1: that more fentyl started coming into the US versus heroin,
Speaker 1: which you know is dangerous nuff as it is, and
Speaker 1: so people are going to be using this, they're going
Speaker 1: to be having more overdoses the and also with the
Speaker 1: pandemic upsetting essentially the supply chain for this, you're going
Speaker 1: to have a more variable dose where that is what
Speaker 1: might kill people. Instead of going to the same dealer
Speaker 1: who is giving the same stuff they were using before this,
Speaker 1: they have to go to a different person or it's
Speaker 1: a different supply and that change in in potency you
Speaker 1: know that they're getting from these ships. It might be
Speaker 1: with leading this increase in overdoses, which is like at
Speaker 1: increase over twenty nineteen, which was bad enough as it was.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is that we're going to enshrine
Speaker 1: harm reduction ideas into state laws and there's a way
Speaker 1: to try and knock this down, like, you know, if
Speaker 1: people are going to use drugs, let's have used as
Speaker 1: safely as possible, not have hid and appaditis breaks while
Speaker 1: we're at it. So we're seeing this program is going
Speaker 1: to be trying to promote model laws. But we're seeing
Speaker 1: this come at a time where there's cities across the country,
Speaker 1: as you noted in your article, that are shutting down
Speaker 1: things that some of these modelized might do, like needle
Speaker 1: exchange sites things like that. Right, Well, what we're seeing
Speaker 1: in some places, and it's clear most clear, like in Charleston,
Speaker 1: West Virginia and Atlantic City, is there's this effort post
Speaker 1: pandemic to spur business, and the city council or their
Speaker 1: equivalent they're looking around and saying, like why do we
Speaker 1: want a needle exchange where we're trying to have a
Speaker 1: shopping mall or a casino or that side of thing.
Speaker 1: And so there's this and you also have this turnover
Speaker 1: of sort of lawmakers who don't understand harm reduction. They
Speaker 1: didn't go through the last cycle of it. They just
Speaker 1: look at it, as you say, this sort of stigmatizing
Speaker 1: view of it is like, oh, you're just helping people
Speaker 1: do drugs instead of saying like, essentially we're asking about
Speaker 1: a football helmet while they're doing it, you know, instead
Speaker 1: of letting them crash into each other on the field.
Speaker 1: And so you get the kind of anti drug attitude
Speaker 1: that you know, opposes all forms of trying to make
Speaker 1: life better for these folks, and that conspires to shut
Speaker 1: these things down. At the same time, in the federal level,
Speaker 1: even the Trump administration and embrace needle exchanges, you see
Speaker 1: the Body administration moving to sort of more normalize it
Speaker 1: harm reduction, that is, so that you know, just try
Speaker 1: and help these people out, you know, and don't want
Speaker 1: to get sick, to want to die. One of the
Speaker 1: other aspects of this is are the punitive damages. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of laws treat overdoses as criminal acts, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. I didn't really realize that too much.
Speaker 1: I hadn't looked into it, you know, instead of a
Speaker 1: health event, help this person, you know, get treatment all
Speaker 1: that other stuff. It's a criminal act. You can face
Speaker 1: jail time if you overdose on something. Right, well, some
Speaker 1: states have had to institute good samarian laws where if
Speaker 1: you report that somebody are with as an overdose, that
Speaker 1: you're not going to be arrested. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a fear that people have in some states. In other places,
Speaker 1: like just carrying syringes is enough to get you arrested.
Speaker 1: You know, people complain about needle litter. It's beIN the
Speaker 1: reason is in a lot of places because it's illegal
Speaker 1: to have the needles, so people get rid of them
Speaker 1: as fast as they can. That's why they're all over
Speaker 1: the place. And you know, more important as these very
Speaker 1: fundamental changes that need to be made to laws, like
Speaker 1: you get arrested, you lose your access to medicaid. Then
Speaker 1: you can't go into recovery because there's nothing to pay
Speaker 1: for it, and so you might be on like medication
Speaker 1: assisted treatment, which is the you know, seems to be
Speaker 1: the best way to help people who are addicted to opioids,
Speaker 1: but then they get you know, picked up on a
Speaker 1: bench warrant because they missed a meeting with the prole officer.
Speaker 1: Because their lives are pretty messy, they lose their medicaid,
Speaker 1: they lose the chance to get paid recovery. So there's
Speaker 1: a whole vast array of like that machinery of the
Speaker 1: law that needs to be uh fixed to help people,
Speaker 1: you know, in this situation which is killing a lot
Speaker 1: of people. It was a problem before the pandemic, it
Speaker 1: was exacerbated by the pandemic. And you know, we'll have
Speaker 1: to see what any of this action, uh if it
Speaker 1: does help improve any of that. And speaking of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been seeing a lot of this cape
Speaker 1: cod COVID outbreak, just headlines about it. This is kind
Speaker 1: of one of those things that caused the CDC to
Speaker 1: reverse their guidance on mask wearing. Vaccinated individuals should also
Speaker 1: we'd be wearing masks in certain high transmission areas. Tell
Speaker 1: us about what we saw in that. This has to
Speaker 1: do with a lot of parties and and things that
Speaker 1: we're going on around July four, So you know, around
Speaker 1: July four, the outbreak they're talking about, you know, as
Speaker 1: in Provincetown and obviously that was a big party time,
Speaker 1: and so there are a lot of people dancing very
Speaker 1: close to each other then, which is suspected by some
Speaker 1: observers have played a role in the outbreak. And what
Speaker 1: essentially happened was on Tuesday, last week's CDC came out
Speaker 1: said whoa, whoa, we're seeing signs that people who are
Speaker 1: vaccinated are still having levels of virus in them that
Speaker 1: are equivalent to what people who are unvaccinated are having,
Speaker 1: and that's worrisome because that might mean they're transmissible. We've
Speaker 1: told a bunch of people they can't transmit when they're vaccinated,
Speaker 1: and where if we've given people bad advice, We're worried
Speaker 1: about that. So we're going to try and reverse this
Speaker 1: masking advice to say, like, if you're indoors in an
Speaker 1: area where there's high transmission, and even if so, even
Speaker 1: then if you've been vaccinated, you should wear a mask,
Speaker 1: which was a switch. It turns out that six of
Speaker 1: the counties in the country and then immediately everybody started
Speaker 1: asking like, you know, where is this evidence that you're seeing.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't talk about it. It's clusters. There
Speaker 1: was political pushback look into Congress were suspicious of mask
Speaker 1: mandates were saying it's a case in India that turns
Speaker 1: out to not be true. They don't seem to be
Speaker 1: willing to cop to that because the CDC set on Friday. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was this case in Provincetown. They didn't even name
Speaker 1: the town in their their mmwre the Mortality and Morbidity
Speaker 1: Weekly report that described it, but that's where it was,
Speaker 1: a province town. So what we now know is that
Speaker 1: there was a pretty big outbreak. There was probably about
Speaker 1: eight hundred people, and half of them were out of towners,
Speaker 1: and the data they have is from the Massachusetts Residence
Speaker 1: from the Massachusetts Department of Health, and what was really
Speaker 1: striking was that there about sev of the people vaccinated
Speaker 1: were the ones who had gotten infected. The thing is
Speaker 1: that makes us all uncertain is that most people have vaccinations,
Speaker 1: and we know the vaccines already aren't perfect, so it
Speaker 1: might just be that, like, the vaccines aren't perfect, but
Speaker 1: the hell of a lot of people are vaccinated, so
Speaker 1: of course there's some back through infections, which is why
Speaker 1: you know more of the people in the sick crowd
Speaker 1: were turned out to be vaccinated. But what was alarming
Speaker 1: to the CDC was the measures of their illness. There's
Speaker 1: these genetic tests, you know, where you take a swab
Speaker 1: from a person and run it through a machine and
Speaker 1: you see how many cycles of amplification of the genes
Speaker 1: it takes for them to get to prove positive for
Speaker 1: the disease. And this is where the MMWR showed it
Speaker 1: was that they were statistically equivalent in the vaccinated unvaccinated people,
Speaker 1: which would suggest that they had equal amounts of virus
Speaker 1: in them, but not necessarily. So like that's the reason
Speaker 1: why everybody's cautious about this CDC is essentially staying here.
Speaker 1: Maybe people have as much virus in them, maybe, but
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure because it's only these PCR
Speaker 1: tests and not a really fully functional lab test that's
Speaker 1: shown this or you know, an infection change. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that we've had a difficulty with
Speaker 1: throughout the pandemic, right, everything is constantly changing so much,
Speaker 1: the guidance change, you know, people getting frustrated with it,
Speaker 1: but the science were going through it in real time, right,
Speaker 1: so we still have to see what the delta variant
Speaker 1: really does. The good thing is that in most of
Speaker 1: those cases. All these people reported mild symptoms cough, headache,
Speaker 1: that sore throat, muscle pain, fever, the normal. Uh. Senator
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham just came down with COVID. He said he
Speaker 1: has mild symptoms, credits that to having the vaccine. So
Speaker 1: that still seems to be the best way to avoid
Speaker 1: just getting severely sick. So we'll continue to watch all
Speaker 1: of this. Dan Vergano, science reporter at BuzzFeed News, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us. Thanks for putting up
Speaker 1: with me. I do like talking about this with you.
Speaker 1: Take care of man. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has
Speaker 1: been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories.
Speaker 1: You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast
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