BY DUFF WILSON
President Barack Obama on Friday
signed into law a measure that pledges greater efforts to protect
drug-dependent newborns and assist their parents.
The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act also
stresses drug treatment and overdose prevention to help stanch the nation’s
heroin and opioid drug epidemic.
Obama said in a statement that 78 Americans die from
opioid overdose every day, and noted that the legislation included only modest
steps to address the epidemic.
"I am deeply disappointed that Republicans failed
to provide any real resources for those seeking addiction treatment to get the
care that they need," Obama said. "In fact, they blocked efforts
by Democrats to include $920 million in treatment funding."
The bill was passed nearly unanimously by both the
House of Representatives and the Senate.
Efforts to enforce provisions to protect newborns and
help their parents come in response to a Reuters investigation last year titled
"Helpless & Hooked."
The new law requires that the federal government and
every state follow a 2003 law that was routinely ignored. That law called on
states to require hospitals and social services to report, track and assist
drug-dependent newborns and their families.
Reuters found that no more than nine states were
following that requirement. Most children born to addicted mothers, including
many mothers who were taking prescribed methadone, were not being reported by
hospitals as required by law. Often, that was because medical workers feared
involving child protective services, as the existing law requires. When cases
were reported to social services, Reuters found, efforts to protect the child
and help the parents often were limited.
The failures came at a cost. Reuters found more than
110 babies since 2010 died under preventable circumstances after being sent
home to families ill-equipped to care for them. Experts said far more children
have likely died but gone uncounted.
The new law promises a non-punitive approach that
includes "safe care plans" aimed at keeping newborns at home with
their parents, who will receive additional help.
"This is a step forward for vulnerable babies
who, due to an opioid dependency, will begin their lives facing enormous
challenges," said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat
on the Senate subcommittee on children and families. "Reuters’ initial
reporting shined a light on a darkness that had enveloped far too many lives.
There is much more work to do but this is a genuine step forward."
Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who
chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which initiated the
measure, said it will track state actions.
"These reforms are an important part of our
broader efforts to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic and provide these
vulnerable families a better chance at a brighter future," Kline said in a
statement.
In 2013, the latest year with nationwide hospital
reporting, 27,315 babies were diagnosed with newborn drug withdrawal syndrome,
a five-fold increase from a decade earlier.
Reuters found that one drug-dependent baby was born on
average every 19 minutes in the United States. Some suffer shaking, crying and
feeding problems as they battle withdrawal.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on
the Senate Finance Committee, said the broader addiction law was "no more
than a half measure" without more funding. Wyden has co-sponsored a
measure setting aside money for substance abuse treatment for parents in danger
of losing their children. It passed the House but stalled in the Senate.
Jim Greenwood, a former Pennsylvania congressman who
championed the 2003 law, said the deaths Reuters revealed represent "a
national disgrace and glaring failure at the federal, state and local level to
implement Plans of Safe Care for infants." Greenwood, now president of a
Washington, D.C.-based biotechnology group, applauded the new measure "to
improve the health and safety of these babies and their families."
Stephen Patrick, an assistant professor of pediatrics
at Vanderbilt University and leading researcher on the condition, said the new law
is "good news" but added: "Wish there was funding that came with
it."
(Reporting by Duff Wilson; Editing by
Leslie Adler)
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