Strategies

Provide medications such as methadone to individuals diagnosed with opioid use disorder in outpatient, residential, and hospital settings, usually with counseling and behavioral therapies; often called MAT

Support programs that provide small loans, usually to individuals with lower incomes, to start or expand a small business, often with business development training and other technical assistance

Maintain the current legal age when an individual can purchase alcoholic beverages; currently 21 years in all states

Increase the lowest hourly, daily, or monthly compensation that employers may legally pay to workers

Support initiatives that combine multiple components such as education, skills building, and contraceptive promotion to reduce pregnancy among youth

Distribute Naloxone to trained community members and first responders to reverse opioid overdoses

Provided work supports for low income individuals and families (e.g., job search assistance, transitional jobs, subsidized child care, health insurance, etc.); participants worked at least 30 hours/week

Regulate short-term loans that must be repaid by a borrower’s next pay day via bans, caps on maximum interest rates and loan amounts, or require minimum loan terms and credit cost

Use databases, housed in state agencies, to track prescribing and dispensing of Schedule II, III, IV, and V drugs and other controlled substances

Establish programs that accept expired, unwanted, or unused medicines from designated users and dispose of them responsibly

Allow adults to possess a limited amount of marijuana for personal, non-medical use

Offer a refundable tax credit to working families with qualifying children or other dependents that receive care outside the home (e.g., a spouse with disabilities)

Apologize for the history and legacy of slavery and provide direct payments or community investments to Black descendants of people enslaved in the U.S.

Educate owners, managers, servers, and sellers at alcohol establishments about strategies to avoid illegally selling alcohol to underage youth or intoxicated patrons

Repeal government control over retail sales of alcoholic beverages, allowing commercial retailing of those beverages

Increase enforcement of laws that prohibit alcoholic beverage service to intoxicated customers, usually with fines, imprisonment, or revocation of a license

Promote abstinence from sexual activity, generally only with mention of condoms and birth control to highlight failure rates

Provide reproductive health care services such as counseling, contraception, and testing in middle and high school-based health centers

Require a minimum age for sellers in off-premise locations that sell alcohol and servers and bartenders in on-premise locations

Adopt laws that hold private property owners who provide alcohol to minors or obviously intoxicated individuals on their property liable if someone is killed or injured as a result

Provide objective, normative information to reduce college students’ misperceptions about alcohol use and, ultimately, change their drinking behavior

Explore ways to increase Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program benefit amounts for aged, blind, or disabled individuals, including children, with little or no income

Provide sterile injection equipment and often other treatment and referral services to people who inject drugs; also called needle or syringe exchange programs and needle syringe programs

Support school-, community-, and clinic-based teen pregnancy prevention programs such as comprehensive sex education, HIV/STI prevention and youth development efforts, service learning, etc.

Increase compensation provided to unemployed workers looking for jobs by expanding eligibility, amount, or duration of benefits

Provide all individuals with regular cash transfers, without conditions, over their lifetimes

Provide all students with the information and skills to prevent alcohol use; programs can be delivered via a specific curriculum or as a component of classroom behavior management