Vox has a report comparing the states on one measure of the fight against opioid addiction, the ratio of providers of a drug used to treat opioid disorder and the number of opioid deaths in a state.

As you can see from the Vox map, Arkansas turns up worse than average.

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The map looks particularly at the number of buprenorphine providers in the state relative to how many opioid overdose deaths a state has. Buprenorphine is a medication used to treat opioid addiction; along with methadone and naltrexone, it’s widely considered the gold standard of care for opioid use disorder, with studies showing medications can cut the all-cause mortality rate among opioid addiction patients by half or more.

A positive note on this point appears in David Koon’s extensive cover story in the Times this week on the opioid crisis in Arkansas, which has the country’s second-highest prescription rate for teh drug.

Dr. Rick Smith, a psychiatrist at UAMS, talked to David Koon about, among other things, the drug regimen cited in the Vox article. He said he hoped its use would expand.

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The approach that works best right now is what’s called medication-assisted treatment. “The one that we’re hoping works and gets widespread use in Arkansas is treatment with Suboxone,” he said. “That can be done in a primary care physician’s office. They have to have counseling as well as this drug in tapering doses, tapered over a number of weeks. If they’re on really high doses of opioids, you have to lower the doses of opioids first, and then get them on Suboxone.”

Take a look at David’s article, which reports on the extensive effort underway in Arkansas to respond to the drug crisis and some signs of progress.

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