Maine
Editorial: After another grim year of overdose deaths, Maine needs more resources and new ways of thinking
When the ultimate knowledge are in, Maine is predicted to set one other gut-wrenching report for opioid deaths in 2022. There have been additionally report overdose deaths in 2021. And in 2020.
Maine has made important strides in prevention, remedy and restoration providers in recent times. And but we’ve by no means misplaced so many individuals to dependancy. A lot devoted and tough work is being completed on the bottom to assist others, however it nonetheless hasn’t been sufficient.
These numbers, these individuals we’ve got misplaced, have to be one more name to motion for Maine policymakers. The lesson right here shouldn’t be to surrender on coverage progress that has been made — with out these developments, like better entry to probably life saving naloxone, much more Mainers would have died on this terrifying age of fentanyl.
The lesson, or at the very least a part of the lesson, have to be to marshal extra sources and to problem previous methods of approaching this continued disaster.
Gordon Smith, the director of opioid response for Gov. Janet Mills, not too long ago spoke at a gathering organized by the Bangor-area group Penobscot County Cares. He addressed the variety of opioid deaths early in his remarks.
“Each dying is not only one individual. It’s an entire household, it’s a neighborhood, it’s a piece website, it’s a college. The impression is profound,” Smith stated on the Jan. 12 assembly. “It’s not the one factor that we’ve got to work on. We additionally should very a lot take into consideration the 93 % of people who find themselves surviving overdoses and join them to providers.”
He added that it was “a really grim 12 months.” There ought to be little question about that, and little question that extra have to be completed to avoid wasting lives in 2023.
“It’s been a really grim two years, and I feel now we’re extra practical that these numbers don’t get higher simply because we hope that they’ll get higher every week,” Smith added. “They’ll get higher after we put sufficient sources on the bottom to make it higher.”
Underneath the Mills administration, the state has taken welcome steps like rising entry to naloxone, including extra remedy facilities and rising efforts to attach individuals with restoration. Smith talked about that the state’s Opioid Response Strategic Motion Plan is being up to date. This ongoing work is commendable and desperately wanted.
The administration, and all of us, must do one thing else as nicely: We have to reassess our previous positions and ensure our outdated methods of considering and discomfort about sure concepts aren’t standing in the best way of saving extra lives.
On the Penobscot County Cares assembly, Smith was requested about drug decriminalization and secure injection websites. The Mills administration opposed and lawmakers finally voted down a invoice final legislative session that might have decriminalized possession of small quantities of scheduled medication. The identical was true with a proposal that might have allowed secure injection websites, which give a supervised location for drug use with the purpose of decreasing overdoses, the unfold of infectious illness and prosecutions.
Smith stated on the occasion earlier this month that Mills doesn’t help secure consumption websites, and referenced “fairly miserable” early ends in Oregon, the place only a few individuals used a brand new well being evaluation hotline created as a part of the decriminalization effort there.
“I don’t suppose that we rule out something. I feel we maintain an open thoughts,” he stated.
In 2021 when the Mills administration opposed the decriminalization invoice, an official from the Maine Division of Public Security testified that the division did “not discover that the decriminalization of illicit medication is an answer to the substance use and overdose disaster in our communities.”
We disagree. We now have supported and proceed to help the push to decriminalize the possession of small quantities of medicine which can be presumed to be for private use slightly than trafficking. The proof, via years of expertise, clearly exhibits that we can’t arrest our means out of this disaster.
As for Oregon’s current expertise, that ought to inform Maine’s implementation of some type of decriminalization for small quantities of medicine, not preclude it. Plus, ends in Portugal are higher established and compelling. We hope that Mills and her administration will revisit and rethink their place on this concern.
State officers should not the one ones who should mirror after one other tragic 12 months of overdose deaths, nonetheless. We should ask the identical of ourselves. Steps like secure injection websites have frankly felt like a bridge too far for us up to now, and that’s one thing we should reassess.
We don’t have all of the solutions. Addressing opioid deaths is extremely difficult, however we all know this a lot to be true: Throughout the state, we can’t let our personal discomfort stand in the best way of saving lives.