NEW FUTURES AND ITS ADVOCATES HOLD STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS’ FEET TO THE FIRE ON SUBSTANCE MISUSE POLICY

PRESS RELEASE
August 16, 2016

CONTACT: Sheila Vargas
SVargas@New-Futures.org
(603) 848-3229

NEW FUTURES AND ITS ADVOCATES HOLD STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS’ FEET TO THE FIRE ON SUBSTANCE MISUSE POLICY

CONCORD, NH – While New Hampshire’s news cycle continues to be saturated with campaign promises around New Hampshire’s current substance misuse crisis, New Futures and hundreds of its advocates are making sure state and local officials follow through on them.

Less than one month after the results from a UNH/WMUR poll showed that the substance misuse crisis is still viewed as the number one issue of concern for Granite Staters, New Futures today launched a policy accountability initiative centered around substance misuse entitled Five Points for New Hampshire’s Future.

Following the release of the five point agenda, trained advocates will go back to their towns and communities to host local events where they will ask state and local officials and candidates for elected office to endorse it. The agenda covers the following five specific policy areas: restoring the state’s alcohol fund, permanently reauthorizing Medicaid Expansion, investing in evidence informed prevention programs, advancing behavioral workforce development, and removing barriers to insurance coverage for substance use disorder treatment.

“Although policymakers took significant steps to address New Hampshire’s substance misuse epidemic in 2016, this action should not lull the state into a sense of complacency regarding the epidemic that continues its unrelenting grip on the Granite State,” said New Futures Executive Director Linda Saunders Paquette as she opened the event.

Ashley Hurteau, an individual who was able to access treatment services because of the Medicaid Expansion program, spoke at the event as a new advocate and was the first to endorse the agenda. “I stand before all of you today as an advocate for the five point agenda and for Medicaid Expansion because I am living proof that by giving individuals suffering with substance use disorder access to health insurance we – as a state – are giving people like me the chance to be who they really are again.”

New Futures has made clear through this policy accountability initiative that the organization is ready to work with all local and statewide officials who choose to endorse this agenda and who are willing to work toward turning the tide on our state’s most pressing public health crisis – the epidemic of substance misuse