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Task Force Calls For Broad Action to Fight Drug Crisis

Mal Leary
/
MPBN
Thomas Delahanty, U.S attorney for Maine, addresses the opiate conference in Hallowell on Friday.

A task force led by U.S. Attorney Tom Delahanty, Maine Attorney General Janet Mills and Public Safety Commissioner John Morris is calling for more money, better coordination, and an increase in medication-assisted drug treatment to address Maine’s opioid epidemic.

The group’s recommendations come after months of meetings with the public and with those on the front lines of the crisis.

More than a hundred doctors, judges, lawmakers and members of law enforcement turned out for a forum in Hallowell to hear the recommendations explained, and to plan for their implementation. Delahanty kicked off the conference.

“We need to adopt the recommendations on prevention and education to keep people away from drugs in the first place and we need to adopt the recommendations on treatment,” he says. “Effective treatment takes a long time, it is costly, but it must be done”

There appears to be no slowdown in the crisis. The task force reports that the number of Mainers dying from overdoses continues to climb and so does the number of families affected by addiction.

Attorney General Janet Mills says the task force has heard from nearly 1,500 Mainers at forums held across the state.

“We spout off the statistics, we talk about 272 deaths, we talk about 1,013 drug-affected babies, but that didn’t bring it home without talking about the specific individuals, without talking about those families, those schools where school nurses are demanding Narcan in the schools,” she says.

Narcan is an antidote for a drug overdose. The panel members heard that the drug is saving lives, but with abuse widening, doctors say its availability is more important than ever.

The report also calls for better coordination of prevention and education efforts, including a new position in each of the state’s eight public health districts.

And then there’s the issue of access to treatment. The task force is calling for expansion of medication-based treatment such as methadone and Suboxone. Currently, there are waiting lists to access both.

Gordon Smith, a member of the panel and the vice president of the Maine Medical Association, says it is going to cost money over many years to battle the problem.

“This epidemic is costing the state tens of millions of dollars. It will cost tens of millions of dollars to fix it, but without that commitment, and some of it is money, more people are going to die,” he says.

Smith says the dozens of people who worked on the task force understand that not everything can be accomplished at once. But he says there is a consensus that addressing the whole problem must include prevention and treatment as well as drug enforcement.

Public Safety Commissioner John Morris says that is a huge undertaking, since so much trafficking is controlled by sophisticated gangs.

“Drug distribution in this state is being run by out-of-state gangs — I know you don’t want to hear it. A lot of people put their head in the sand when we talk about out-of-state gangs. But don’t be misled, they are organizing and running the distribution network,” he says.

Morris says law enforcement recognizes that addicts are not the problem, they are the victims of the drug traffickers. He announced that the Maine State Police, the largest law enforcement agency in the state, is undertaking a new policy to summon heroin addicts instead of arresting them. The summons will include a recommendation to the district attorney that the person be referred to treatment instead of jail.

Another recommendation is to look at expanding the number of specialized drug courts.

Not all of the recommendations are unanimous, but leaders of the task force say they are in agreement that these recommendations are necessary to address the crisis in the months and years ahead.

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.