Maine will get more than a million dollars in new federal money to fund treatment of patients addicted to opioids.
Rachel Kaprielian, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says the money will go to four community health centers — in Portland, Bangor, Waterville and Lincoln — and will pay for eight new positions.
“And one of the weak points reported by the states was front-line service,” she says. “That people be treated where they live and in their community.”
Kaprielian says the $94 million federal effort will fund 271 health centers nationally, and for treatment that includes medications such as methadone and suboxone. She says the treatment approach will also address other health issues that accompany the addiction.
“Many addicts have co-morbid conditions of depression and other mental health maladies and we need to treat all of it,” she says. “And oftentimes it’s self-medicating with substance abuse, and we want to put that person on a better path and give them the support that they need.”
“Treatment is really the key,” says independent U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine. “And that’s where we haven’t had the capacity.”
King says that in addition to the money announced today, the U.S. Senate this week passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, which would expand prevention and treatment efforts and launch an evidence-based treatment and intervention program.
King says he and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire proposed an amendment to provide $600 million in emergency funding to the initiative, but it failed. King says that’s a tragedy for the growing number of addicts who desperately want treatment but are being turned away.
“Can you imagine making that decision?” he says. “Calling up and having someone say ‘Well we can see you in six months.’ That’s where we have to break this barrier that I think is literally killing us.”
The state this week announced a record 272 overdose deaths in Maine in 2015, the vast majority linked to heroin and prescription drugs.
Meanwhile the CARA bill heads to the U.S. House, which is also considering some drug measures of its own.
