How expanded methadone access helped Switzerland defuse its drug crisis Lev Facher By Lev Facher March 26, 2024 Photography by Djamila Grossman for STAT

https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/26/opioid-addiction-methadone-treatment-switzerland-europe/?utm_campaign=morning_rounds&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=299795638&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-891NMOdRaQpyBVGjTbCJeOlqPK4TLLKS5dxcKYC9deISDA92ginHe1mrcAfbw6V_q24QMgRcwDauhCA5nsujtOk9e1VQ&utm_content=299795638&utm_source=hs_email At a leading Swiss addiction clinic in Zurich, all patients who need addiction care gain instant access to weeks’ worth of medication. They are not required to participate in counseling, or subjected to drug tests, or punished if they relapse and use any kind of illicit substances. American methadone clinics would say that approach leads to disaster. European experts disagree, saying that’s the continent’s key to success. They have a point in Switzerland, where the opioid death rate is now roughly one-twentieth the U.S. rate. In a dozen other wealthy, developed nations where methadone is far more accessible than in the U.S., public health outcomes are far better, with lower rates of opioid overdose, infectious disease transmission, and death. American doctors, lawmakers, and public health officials are beginning to speak out for liberalizing access to methadone as the best tool available to address the crisis. Those who take it are 59% less likely to die of opioid overdose. But American methadone clinics counter that argument, saying that the current restrictions are necessary safety precautions. That doesn’t go over in Europe. “There’s just no evidence for it,” said Philip Bruggmann, a Swiss doctor and medical director of the Arud Centre for Addiction Medicine, told STAT’s Lev Facher. “It really helps people to reintegrate, to stabilize, and I’m not aware of a single case of a person who became opioid-dependent because of this treatment. If you leave it to the black market, people disappear and you can’t reach them, and I think the risk is much bigger.”