Native Americans Hit Hard by Opioid Epidemic

(Winter 2016) American Indian leaders from northern New Mexico have asked to meet with the Justice Department to discuss opioid drugs’ significant impact on their tribes. According to recent research by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the prevalence of OxyContin® and heroin use among American Indian students from 2009 to 2012 is at least double, if not triple, the country’s average. Meanwhile, in Maine, a nonprofit prescription drug abuse prevention initiative is expanding the availability of naloxone to that state’s five tribes, and federal grants to the organization have underwritten the cost for five clinics to be established on tribal lands.

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