Tennessee fails to up ante for drug treatment

A few months after Gov. Bill Haslam and his top deputies announced the “Prescription for Success” to address Tennessee’s pill popping problem, a budget is on his desk without any more money for addiction treatment and less funds for support services. The proposed budget from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services cuts $8.1 million to comply with the governor’s directive that every agency reduce spending by 7 percent. That’s the biggest reduction Haslam has asked agencies to budget since his time in office. One of the primary action points in the “Prescription for Success” is to “increase access and quality of early intervention, treatment and recovery services.” But the proposed budget eliminates funding for adolescent outpatient substance abuse services and adolescent day and evening treatment services — cuts totaling $1.4 million. “This is a huge hit and a tough one to hear,” said Rodger Dinwiddie, executive director of the youth-service organization STARS Nashville, which would lose funding. “Programs such as ours are making a huge difference in impacting the individuals that participate in these services, as well as the community at large.” Doug Varney, commissioner of Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, said his staff had prioritized programs from the most essential to the least essential, rather than doing an across-the-board reductions. Funding for hospitalizations would be cut as a last resort, he said. The cuts were for support programs, not medical treatment, officials stressed. “In the department’s current budget proposal, there are no direct cuts to services for Tennesseans to obtain treatment for an addiction to prescription drugs,” said Mike Machak, a spokesman for the agency. “The department’s proposed budget cuts would impact some select services across the state offering help and support. Individuals with a serious addiction to prescription drugs will continue to have access to direct substance abuse treatment in Tennessee.” But addiction experts say Tennessee cannot accommodate the people in need of treatment now, and their number is likely to rise as new state laws curtail the amount of narcotics that doctors can prescribe. Under the new guidelines, doctors can write prescriptions for daily doses up to 120 milligrams of morphine equivalents, which is the same as four 30 milligram dosages of hydrocodone a day. About 90,000 Tennesseans get pain meds that exceed this daily dosage. Mary-Linden Salter, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Alcohol, Drug & Addiction Services, said there is already a substantial waiting list. More than 250,000 Tennesseans have some kind of a substance abuse problem, she said. “Adult services treats just over 13,000 people a year,” Salter said. “It is a drop in the bucket.” The budget also proposes ending $4.5 million for mental health peer support centers statewide. Centerstone runs the programs in Nashville and Middle Tennessee. “Over the last decade, Tennessee has built one of the most successful Peer Support Programs in the nation,” said Ben Middleton with Centerstone. “This program serves as a critical lifeline to thousands of Tennesseans living with mental health disorders and intellectual disabilities. Without it these individuals will lose a vital — if not their only — source of community support, connection and education, turning vulnerable situations into dire ones.” Reach Tom Wilemon at 615-726-5961 and on Twitter @TomWilemon. Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/1xLdq0q