End the Opioid Epidemic
Addiction is a disease, and greedy pharmaceutical companies and the lack of Congressional oversight exacerbate it. The opioid epidemic has been a growing problem for decades, but the last 10 years have seen fatal opioid overdoses triple to more than 3000 per year in Illinois. Pharmaceutical companies lined their pockets by pushing unnecessary painkillers on families across the district while pharmacies made millions by filling bad prescriptions. It’s time we start punishing the bad actors, not the people who are battling addiction.
Qasim will:
- Not take any money from healthcare or pharmaceutical companies, because he stands with the victims of this crisis, not its enablers.
- Treat addiction like the disease it is and invest in treatment and rehabilitation centers instead of punishing the people battling addiction with prison sentences.
- Decriminalize possession of non-commercial quantities of heroin and fentanyl and refer those facing addiction to treatment centers.
- Fund supervised injection sites.
- Pierce the corporate veil to hold the executives of big pharma financially and personally accountable for opioid overprescription, addiction, and death, so that billionaire corporations like Purdue and Walgreens face meaningful accountability for enabling the opioid crisis, not walk away by paying a fine.
- Tax opioid companies like tobacco companies to fund addiction treatment and rehabilitation centers.
- Provide additional funding for Narcan/Naloxone for first responders and drug treatment centers nationwide.