But the state’s medical system could also be doing more. Only one-quarter of all addiction-treatment providers in New Jersey offer medication-assisted treatment, a category that includes Suboxone. Perhaps because Suboxone is so scarce, many heroin users seem to have gotten the idea that their only option is a residential program, which many experts now believe aren’t as essential as just getting started on Suboxone. In Atlantic City, I met a 54-year-old heroin user who was smoking a clove cigarette outside a drop-in center for the homeless. She told me that if there was a way to get Suboxone, she would “definitely” get on it. But she said treatment programs are hard to get into, especially because she does not have a photo ID.

An older man who said he was a veteran was also looking forward to “getting into treatment” for his heroin addiction. But he worried that a residential treatment program won’t help him in the long run, because it wouldn’t allow him to keep a job. He’s homeless, and he needs to earn money so he has somewhere to go once he’s clean. “Right now I have nothing in my pockets,” he said. “If we go in six months, we come out, we’re still broke.”

There are, however, examples around the state of addiction treatment performed in a way that aligns with the scientific evidence.

New Jersey actually has a higher-than-average number of doctors who have become licensed to prescribe Suboxone. In every state, doctors are required to take an eight-hour class before they can do so, despite the fact that no such class was required to prescribe the prescription painkillers that ignited the opioid epidemic. Nationally, only about 5 percent of all doctors have this Suboxone license, and in 2011, 43 percent of all U.S. counties had no doctors who could prescribe Suboxone. About 1,660 physicians and nurses have the license in New Jersey, which has about 9,500 total primary-care doctors and psychiatrists.

Read: How France cut heroin overdoses by 79 percent in four years

But many drug users are poor, and not every licensed doctor accepts insurance. Doctors at places like the Henry J. Austin clinic in Trenton and at Project H.O.P.E. in Camden do. Lynda Bascelli, the chief medical officer of Project H.O.P.E., told me some patients ask to transfer their Suboxone treatment to Project H.O.P.E. after they realize it both accepts Medicaid and prescribes Suboxone. “Some of the patients might have been to a physician that had a cash-only practice, and they did the best they could to pay to be seen so they could get their prescription,” she said.

If people use heroin, and would like to quit, they can walk into an appointment with a primary-care doctor at these clinics, just like they would if they had strep throat. Unless they want to be, they aren’t referred to an inpatient program or detox center. Doctors at places like Project H.OP.E. and Henry J. Austin prescribe enough Suboxone so that the patient feels like it’s working. This system allows heroin users who have jobs to keep them while they recover from their addictions, just like anyone with any other chronic illness would.