Tennessee Voices, Episode 291: Joshua Schrecker, Aegis Sciences Corporation
The drug overdose epidemic continues to worsen in the U.S., with fatalities growing year over.
Tennessee is following this deadly trend.
Addiction and overdoses saw a significant increase as COVID emerged, but the pandemic took so much of citizens’ attention. It is a theme I addressed on a 2020 Tennessee Voices video podcast with Erin Calipari of the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research.
On this episode, I explored the topic again, but this time with Dr. Joshua Schrecker, director of clinical affairs at Aegis Sciences Corporation.
Earlier this year, Schrecker wrote a guest opinion column about how drug tests can lead to more understanding about the opioid crisis. He acknowledged that drug testing is typically viewed as punitive, but he argued that testing can also lead to better results for patients and drug treatments.
“… testing has far greater capabilities and implications – for monitoring medication adherence, as a guidepost for providers, and when used correctly, as a tool for identifying use trends of existing and new designer drugs,” he wrote.
On the podcast, we discussed the dangers of illicitly manufactured fentanyl and its deadly impact on people and the consequences for their families.
Op-Ed by Joshua Schrecker: Seeing drug tests as tools can lead to understanding more about opioid crisis
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About Tennessee Voices
The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.
Please email your ideas for future guests to me at dplazas@tennessean.com. Thank you for watching.
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Voices: Drug testing, new treatments with Joshua Schrecker
