SMART Policy Podcast

Naloxone. Access to treatment. Housing. Employment. Educational opportunities. We’re used to hearing about the need for these aspects of recovery. But what about community? A place to gather with others, especially those with similar experiences? That’s where recovery community centers come in. My first guest this month is Dottie Greene. She’s the executive director of the first recovery community...

As the drug overdose deaths continue to climb, we have heard more and more Sheriffs and law enforcement officers across the state say “we can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem.” That the criminal justice system plays an important role, but not the only role. That there are many, many factors in the overdose epidemic. My guest this month is Sergeant Mike Hotz of Metro Nashville Police Departme...

There have been huge changes at the federal level regarding the prescribing of medications for opioid use disorder, particularly regarding buprenorphine. For two decades since the DATA 2000 law, addiction clinicians had to get a specialized waiver through the DEA to prescribe buprenorphine, and many states passed laws with practice guidelines and limits on the numbers of patients they could see. T...

When the CDC reports that almost 4,000 Tennesseans died of a drug overdose in 2023, it can be easy to forget that each one of those numbers represents a human being that was found deceased, investigated by law enforcement, and analyzed by a medical examiner. Every death is an individual story, and each story is only known insofar as we have all the facts. Determining the facts comes down to forens...

In May, 2023, Governor Lee signed SB 378/HB 403, which imposed significant regulations on the production and sale of hemp-derived cannabinoids, including Delta-8, Delta-10, and all other compounds known as cannabimimetics, which have effects on the same neurological system as marijuana. Due to changes in the 2018 Farm Bill, these compounds abruptly became legal across the country, and many prevent...

If anyone has gotten a true bird’s eye view of the drug problem in the United States, it’s someone like Special Agent Karl Colder of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. From starting in Philadelphia when crack cocaine was the top concern to overseeing the region containing West Virginia and D.C. when the opioid crisis progressed from prescription pills to heroin and fentanyl, finally directi...

TEMPO, or Training and Empowering Musicians to Prevent Overdoses, is a multi-partner initiative to distribute naloxone and train musicians and concert venue workers to identify and prevent opioid overdoses. TEMPO recently made waves in Nashville with a pilot program in partnership with Hikma, who makes Kloxxado, as well as ONEbox, to distribute high-tech overdose reversal first aid kits to music v...

My guest this month is Karen Pershing, executive director of Metro Drug Coalition. In the last legislative session, Karen played a significant role in pushing for a bill that reduced the barrier to opening new syringe service programs in rural Tennessee. In this episode, we discuss the impact of the bill, how it made it through the legislature, her behind-the-scenes role in the policymaking proces...

The Rocky Top Recovery Ambassadors are a group of college students, undergrad and grad, that identify as being in recovery and or having a mental health disorder. Building a community on campus of students wanting a safer, sober college experience, the ambassadors hosted weekly all-recovery meetings and mental health events, as well as sober-friendly social events like group yoga, concerts, bounce...

Earlier this year, three different bills were filed that would all increase the penalty for possessing fentanyl to a Class B felony. One would accomplish this by reclassifying fentanyl as an agent of chemical warfare, though this bill was returned to the Clerk’s desk as two complementary pieces of legislation advanced. Those bills, SB0193 and SB1398, the latter of which is known as the One Pill Wi...

In 2020, the TN Together Student Survey found that the average age for first using a substance was 13 to 14 years old. Identifying and intervening at that age is thus crucial. Most of the time, however, the problem isn’t caught until later: usually when the person is college aged. My guest this month is Nathan Payne, director of collegiate recovery at the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and...

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of addiction treatment, and that the biggest obstacle we face in combating the overdose crisis is an overall lack of access to that treatment. Health insurance is of course a major factor, and in Tennessee our statewide average for people lacking insurance is over 12%, which is more t...

Starting with the multiple guilty pleas from Purdue Pharma in 2020, thousands of lawsuits across the country have lead to a series of settlements from numerous pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors for their role in the opioid crisis. From just the first and second wave of settlements with Cardinal Health, Janssen, AmerisourceBergen, CVS, Walmart, Walgreens, and several others, Tennessee i...

Purdue Pharma. Cardinal Health. CVS. Walgreens. I could keep going. Drug manufacturers and distributors have rightly come under scrutiny in light of the opioid abatement settlements. As these companies start paying hundreds of millions of dollars out across the country, in an effort to try to make up for the damage they caused by ignoring the warning signs of opioid prescribing trends over the las...

Everyone who’s gone to elementary school in the last fifty years has had some sort of “Just Say No” sessions and activities; we’re all familiar with this type of informational prevention. But there is much more to the picture. My guest this month is Stephanie Strutner, CEO of the Prevention Alliance of Tennessee, an advocacy organization that represents dozens of grassroots coalitions across the s...

We are now in the fourth wave of the overdose crisis. Fentanyl is the still the most common drug involved in these deaths, but stimulants, primarily methamphetamine, is increasingly prevalent. In fact, the vast majority of all overdose deaths now involve multiple drugs. Meth, cocaine, heroin; worse still, newer contaminants like the animal tranquilizer xylazine are showing up alongside fentanyl an...

At the end of 2022, the CDC released new prescribing guideline for opioids, replacing their last set from 2016. Excluding patients with cancer and other terminal illnesses, this guideline strongly emphasizes alternatives to opioids and urges extreme caution for physicians considering new opioid prescriptions, while also recommending how to appropriately care for chronic pain patients with long-ter...

Telehealth, broadband internet, criminal justice reform, harm reduction...a lot has been changing lately to expand access to treatment for substance use disorder. But how well are these changes being implemented in rural areas, where the need is greatest? And what about prevention? I spoke with Trent Coffey, Executive Director of STAND, a coalition of Scott County businesses, organizations and com...

Harm reduction does not mean drug use is condoned. It simply means withholding condemnation of the behavior while the consequences of behavior are first addressed. For opioids, this basically means keeping people alive so that you can treat them. Jeremy speaks with Genoa Clark, Director of Harm Reduction at Choice Health Network about harm reduction in Tennessee. Featuring new original scoring by...

If there's one thing Tennesseans can agree on, it's that the criminal justice system needs some improvements. In the summer of 2021, the Reentry Success Act and Alternatives to Incarceration Act passed; at the same time telehealth permissions expanded. Jeremy talks with Judge Duane Slone and Dr. Stephen Loyd about how these policy changes will affect justice-involved people with substanc...

Jeremy speaks with Dr. Stephen Loyd, Chief Medical Officer of Cedar Recovery, about the recent legislative changes pertaining to telehealth in the state of Tennessee, and how these changes have expanded access to treatment for opioid use disorder, especially in rural areas.