Distributing 10,000 new doses of Narcan and finding and educating doctors who hand out the most opiate-based prescriptions are among new ways to fight the addiction epidemic that Mayor Jim Kenney proposed Thursday in his 2018 budget address.
An additional $1.9 million in funding will help pay for the initiatives, Kenney said. The city's Department of Public Health will spearhead the growing battle against opioid addiction, which last year killed 900 people in Philadelphia.
Attention to the epidemic has grown considerably in the city and surrounding suburban counties as deaths have grown rapidly in the last decade. NBC10's Emmy Award-winning half-hour documentary, "Generation Addicted," which aired March 21 last year, helped push lawmakers to hold hearings in Philadelphia.
Reporters with NBC10 and NBC10.com testified at a hearing hosted by Councilman David Oh about the findings from the documentary. They were also honored as Council declared 2016 "The Year to Combat the Heroin Abuse Epidemic in Philadelphia."
State legislators in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have since begun to focus attention and funding on opioid addiction and the thousands who die annually in both states from overdoses.
Kenney cited the city's increase in methadone treatment slots since he became mayor last January, but said, "We must do more."
"We are proposing to expand the distribution of naloxone to the 10,000 Philadelphians and their families at risk for overdose, particularly in the Fairhill- Kensington area," Kenney said in his address in Council chambers at City Hall. "We are also requesting the funds necessary to target the Philadelphia doctors who prescribe the most opioids and educate them on how to stop putting their patients at risk for addiction."
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The city will also establish a database to track openings at treatment facilities. Those seeking treatment, he said, will be search the database for openings updated daily.
A spokesman for the city's Department of Public Health said the city will review "aggregate data on prescribing" and visit with those doctors who most frequently sign off on opiate-based pain medication.
The city will then "visit their offices and provide them with information on safe prescribing practices," said James Garrow, director of digital public health for the department. "It is strictly educational, not punitive."
