Drug & Alcohol Rehab in New Mexico

What is the status of the drug epidemic in New Mexico?

Our ranking has improved a little bit with the worsening of the situation in the Northeast with fentanyl, which we’ve been relatively spared from, but our averages have been consistently twice the national average for the past 15 years. … We’ve been plateaued in terms of prescription opioid deaths for the past five years or so. Heroin has gone up.

How does New Mexico’s prescription drug monitoring program combat prescription drug abuse?

Virtually every prescription for a controlled substance moves into a database. It’s our effort to reduce unwanted prescriptions. We’ve got very good data on what’s being prescribed, how much and who’s doing it. Fortunately, we haven’t had a lot of pill mills. … Nevertheless, there’s still a lot of very poor pain management and overprescribing, and this is one of the areas we’re working on and making progress.

How accessible is medication-assisted treatment in New Mexico?

We’re starting to work with major physicians groups to get better prescribing and get more people involved in medication-assisted treatment with Suboxone providers. Fortunately, we do better in our states than most states. But we still have way too few providers of Suboxone. We’re trying to understand the barriers that are keeping providers from doing it.

What factors prevent people from recovering from addiction in the state?

Our limiting factors are our capacities for putting people in long-term maintenance treatment. We have very poor support and capacity for the further end of treatment in terms of rehab step-down capacity. Part of that has to do with Medicaid. We’re trying to work with Medicaid.

What types of progress have been made in recent years?

The national publicity has greatly escalated. This is now front and center of political policy at the national level. None of that existed three years ago.