Led by California, a few states are testing an experimental program that pays people to stop using hard drugs. Health Brief is a coproduction of The Washington Post and KFF Health News. The Golden State was the first to from the Biden administration to cover the sobriety payments, with Medicaid wrapping it into an spearheaded by Democratic Gov.
to provide the state’s sickest residents with a broad array of behavioral health and social services. state and have since followed. California is focusing on stimulants, including cocaine and meth.
Participants must pee into a cup regularly, and if the urine is free of stimulants, they get paid with a gift card, starting at for the first test. The longer they abstain, the more they’re paid — up to a year. Addiction doctors say the treatment, called “ ,” can be lifesaving.
Lethal overdoses in California from meth, including other , have spiked since 2019 and from cocaine , according to a KFF Health Newsanalysis of from the . “Contingency management is the gold standard for stimulant use disorder because you can win things for good behavior. But not a lot of places are providing it yet,” said , a psychiatric in Los Angeles.
“A lot of patients I see on amphetamines show up with these extreme highs and lows, manic behavior, and it can turn into a meth-induced psychosis or kill you.” An intense policy focus on opioids helped reduce slightly from 2022 to 2023, even as use skyrocketed during the pandemic. In the meantime, t.