On December 29th, President Biden signed into legislation the Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction in the Nation (“NOPAIN”) Act. This groundbreaking legislation attempts to prevent opioid addiction before it starts by increasing access to and use of non-addictive pain management approaches for acute pain patients. The legislation attempts to reduce the millions of Americans who go on misuse opioids after being exposed following a short-term pain incident.
Addressing the opioid crisis is not a new adventure for Congress. In fact, Congress has passed several pieces of legislation and spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars trying to fix a problem that has led to 220 Americans dying of an opioid related drug overdose every day. Unfortunately, the opioid crisis has proven time and again that it isn’t a problem that can be fixed just by throwing money at it. That’s why the NOPAIN Act – and its novel approach to preventing opioid addiction before it starts – was such a tremendous feat. This legislation will prevent millions of new cases of opioid addiction and save lives.
Passage of this legislation was a long time coming, but it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of all of the advocates that worked with Voices and the Will Bright Foundation to shine a light on this problem. We hope that passage of this legislation will bring some relief to families who have paid the ultimate price of the opioid epidemic who may know that others will not have to suffer as they have.
On behalf of Voices for Non-Opioid Choices, we’d like to thank Lisa and Bill for their tireless efforts to share their story and the countless advocates – in Alabama and around the country – who joined us in this fight. We hope that you will take a moment to celebrate this with us and pat yourselves on the back. We couldn’t have done it without you.
