Vermont is experiencing a full-blown overdose disaster. A report 210 Vermonters died of preventable opioid-related overdoses in 2021, marking 33.7 overdose deaths per 100,000 folks. That’s a 500% improve since 2010.
For context, Portugal, which has dedicated to dealing with habit with a public well being strategy because the early 2000s, noticed lower than 1 overdose loss of life per 100,000 folks from 2008-2018.
The extent of this disaster is stunning, not least as a result of Vermont has a comparatively strong habit remedy infrastructure. However accessible remedy is inadequate if we don’t hold our mates and neighbors alive lengthy sufficient to entry remedy when they’re prepared. Clearly, what we’re doing isn’t working.
Sadly, state leaders are nonetheless ignoring commonsense methods that might save lives. One such needed and confirmed step could be the opening of overdose prevention websites, medicalized services that enable folks to make use of opioids in a protected, non-judgmental house the place they’ll obtain very important medical providers if needed.
A overview of scientific literature exhibits that overdose prevention websites save lives, contribute to decrease charges of crime and drug use, and assist to alleviate the opposite myriad harms that drug criminalization has achieved to our neighbors and family members.
Opioid customers at an overdose prevention web site have entry to sterilized syringes, fentanyl take a look at strips, overdose reversal medicines and different life-saving instruments. Additionally they have a possibility to connect with long-term remedy providers that may be important to restoration.
These services not solely save lives — additionally they make our communities more healthy and safer. They assist scale back the transmission of HIV, hepatitis C, and different blood-borne pathogens, whereas lowering the incidence of endocarditis, a lethal coronary heart an infection ensuing from unclean syringes.
As well as, overdose prevention websites can decrease prices in our public well being and security programs. As a result of they supply on-site medical take care of folks experiencing overdose, native emergency rooms, regulation enforcement, EMTs, hearth departments and ambulances can focus consideration elsewhere. Offering protected locations to make use of additionally ends in much less public drug use and fewer discarded syringes in public areas.
There are presently greater than 120 overdose prevention websites across the globe. They exist all through Canada, Australia and Europe. Each nation that has carried out these websites has seen substantial reductions in overdose deaths. New York Metropolis simply opened the primary official websites in the USA, and Rhode Island lately grew to become the primary state to statutorily authorize overdose prevention websites. To this present day, there has by no means been an on-site overdose fatality in an overdose prevention web site.
The Senate Well being and Welfare Committee is contemplating a invoice, H. 728, that might create a working group on overdose prevention websites, however the working group’s report wouldn’t be due till late 2023.
Within the meantime, Vermonters will proceed to die preventable deaths. We have to act with way more urgency.
In fact, overdose prevention websites are just one piece of the hurt discount puzzle. The overdose disaster requires a multi-pronged strategy, and that features making naloxone and fentanyl take a look at strips extra extensively and simply accessible; increasing entry to sterile protected injection units and disposal packing containers; bettering good Samaritan protections for looking for emergency well being take care of overdoses; and offering cellular remedy, cellular overdose prevention and better entry to transportation for folks looking for remedy. Each one in all these proposals must be on the desk proper now.
With out these sorts of public well being methods and science-based improvements which are succeeding in international locations across the globe, we are able to anticipate extra of the identical grim outcomes. For a lot of Vermonters battling substance use dysfunction and the households who love them, time is operating out.
Vermont has a option to make. Will we proceed to permit Vermonters to die of preventable drug overdoses — losing tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from opioid settlement funds on failed and incomplete methods? Or will we implement bolder and more practical insurance policies to avoid wasting lives?
Earlier than the legislature adjourns in Might, Vermonters ought to name on Gov. Scott and legislators to see this disaster for what it’s and take decisive motion to reply. That features the instant authorization of overdose prevention websites in Vermont.
Ed Baker is a retired licensed alcohol and drug counselor of 30 years, resides in Burlington and has been in restoration from habit for greater than 37 years. Jay Diaz is normal counsel for the ACLU of Vermont and lives in Williston.