"Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) has introduced AB 2115 that will radically change California's strategy on the treatment of opioid addiction by transforming California from a state with the most restrictive methadone laws in the country, into a state leading in methadone accessibility. The bill will ensure that people with opioid addiction are able to access this lifesaving treatment by removing outdated laws that were first crafted during the Vietnam war. Methadone is the most highly effective medication that eases the debilitating symptoms of opioid withdrawal for people who have quit drugs like heroin and fentanyl. Unfortunately the state’s many bureaucratic barriers to methadone treatment have left medical professionals hobbled in their fight against the spreading fentanyl crisis, leading to a sharp increase in opioid overdoses since 2019. “We’ve reached a point where the treatment for opioid addiction is much harder to get than the deadly drugs themselves,” said Haney. “Dealers are much better at getting fentanyl and heroin into people’s hands than we are at getting them addiction medication. We have to reverse that entirely if we want to save people’s lives.” Currently the state’s stringent regulations far surpass federal guidelines, and require patients to jump through numerous hurdles to access methadone including requiring patients to line up in front of specialized methadone clinics every morning to receive treatment. Drug dealers, aware that people with addiction gather together every morning, often prey on these vulnerable former users as they wait in line. "It is infuriating and mind boggling that during the worst drug crisis in history, as thousands of Californians die every year, that we would keep one of the most effective treatments for addiction locked away where people can’t access it,” said Haney who chairs the Assembly’s Fentanyl and Opioid Overdose Prevention Committee. “If we are serious about stopping fentanyl, we have to get serious about methadone. Get people off of deadly drugs and into treatment, and get rid of these backwards retrograde barriers to treatment that are still in law.”