Colorado U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton joined calls for better ways to halt or treat opioid addiction during a panel discussion at Colorado Mesa University Oct. 12.

He spoke to CMU faculty and students in Grand Junction at the same time President Barack Obama is advocating for better treatment of drug addiction.

“The good news is that awareness is starting to rise,” Obama said during an MTV documentary last week on opioid addiction.

The president said addictions are spreading beyond poor neighborhoods into even “well-to-do” communities.

So far, “how we’ve dealt with the reduction of addiction and drugs has been oftentimes counterproductive,” Obama said. “We need to shift a lot more resources into treatment but we’re still way short of where we need to be.”

Obama’s comments closely paralleled recent statements by Colorado members of Congress, including Tipton and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Denver).

Communities in Tipton’s 3rd Congressional District have some of Colorado’s highest rates of opioid addiction, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Tipton (R-Cortez) has been meeting with community groups in his district to discuss how to address opioid abuse.

“The opioid crisis has hit rural communities across the country particularly hard, where the impacts of the economic crisis still loom and job opportunities are few,” Tipton told The Colorado Statesman. “Unfortunately, in an environment like this where there are few options, drug use increases and heroin has been flooded onto the streets, making it readily available and cheap.”

He said he puts some of his hopes on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA), which Congress passed in July. It authorizes $181 million for opioid prevention and treatment programs.

Opioids are a relatively inexpensive and effective drug for treating pain that have been commonly prescribed by doctors for the past 15 years. They induce a pleasurable sensation as they also block pain receptors.

For acute pain, they can spare patients the agony of a short-term injury or illness, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For chronic pain, they can cause changes in brain chemistry that lead to addiction.

The Department of Health and Human Services is charged under the CARA legislation with setting up a task force to figure out a strategy for doctors to modify pain management.

Tipton said he supports CARA for the way it gives states discretion on how to address drug addiction problems in each community, rather than imposing a single method nationwide.

“I believe CARA takes into account the unique challenges that rural Colorado faces, and I’m going to continue to support these kinds of federal legislative solutions,” Tipton said.

For Colorado, Tipton said one of the best solutions to help drug addicts is a collaboration among law enforcement, drug treatment specialists and health care providers.

“Connecting these individuals to outpatient treatment programs, monitoring their progress and ensuring they are making use of community resources is vitally important to stopping the cycle of drug abuse,” the congressman said.

Last month, DeGette said at a Denver health care clinic that she also supports the federal drug addiction treatment legislation but said its funding levels are too low. She criticized Congress for taking too long to respond to the opioid and heroin epidemic.

One common treatment for opioid addiction is for health care providers to prescribe Suboxone, a drug that blocks pain but does not convey the pleasurable sensation that can lead to addiction.

Suboxone is the subject of an antitrust lawsuit filed recently by Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and 35 other state attorneys general against the makers of the drug. They accuse pharmaceutical manufacturers Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals and MonoSol Rx of using unfair competition to prevent competitors from making lower-cost generic drugs comparable to Suboxone.

“Colorado is experiencing a public health crisis involving opioid addictions and overdoses and we cannot stand by and allow pharmaceutical companies to manipulate the market for a drug that breaks the addiction cycle,” Coffman said in a statement. “These companies are shamelessly preying on patients in need of help.”

Meanwhile, Coffman’s office is leading a new effort to distribute an opioid blocker called naloxone to emergency responders who try to rescue victims of heroin or opioid overdoses.

The Colorado Naloxone for Life Initiative seeks to distribute 2,500 packages of the naloxone to emergency responders in 17 counties with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths. The Drug Enforcement Administration reports that heroin overdoses have increased about 350 percent in Colorado in the past five years.

Last month, the state received a $950,000 federal grant to expand the Colorado Medication Assisted Treatment Program, which administers treatments to drug addicts to help them break their habits.

The money is being distributed through the Colorado Department of Human Services to treatment centers in seven counties that include Denver, Boulder and Pueblo.