At 44, he had been using illicit opioids for more than two decades, bouncing in and out of juvenile halls and then county jails across the Bay Area for selling drugs — including to his own parents — to pay for his addiction. On that cool November day, the jail staff interrupted that downward cycle, offering Santiago a medication that would blunt his opioid cravings and drastically improve his chances of staying sober, staying alive.
Nationally, drug and alcohol overdose is a top cause of death in jails and the leading cause of death for those who have been recently released. At the direction of Gov. State rules will require all jails to provide inmates with a suite of addiction treatment options by October A slew of challenges hamstring the ability to deliver addiction medication in jails, Taylor and health officials said.
The need is vast, but logistical problems hound efforts to keep people who are imprisoned on a regular schedule of medication. That includes Sublocade, the injection of buprenorphine, an opioid addiction treatment approved by the U. Food and Drug Administration, that Santiago receives monthly to quell his cravings. Contra Costa County officials said roughly people already receive the medications daily in county jails, and they will fully implement the changes by the deadline.
Addiction medication, though life-saving, is expensive, he said. A former police officer in Los Angeles, Liu said an experience on the job made him leave law enforcement and focus instead on treating addiction. When a sex worker arrived at the hospital desperate and seeking treatment, he said he had to arrest her after nurses searched her belongings and found hard drugs. At Maguire Correctional Facility, Liu has focused on shoring up access to medication assisted treatment since At that point, three people were receiving the treatment, he said.
By December , 46 were receiving buprenorphine, and Liu said that number will increase with the new Medi-Cal support. Last month, Daniel White lifted up his red jail uniform to show a small node of medication the size of a walnut that protruded from his belly.
