Federal law enforcement is working to crack down on social media channels being used to sell deadly drugs as overdose deaths continue to tear apart families and ruin lives, Maine’s U.S. attorney said Thursday.
“We understand this is more than an epidemic, it is an emergency,” Darcie McElwee, U.S. attorney for the District of Maine said. “Social media has opened up new retail markets upon which international drug cartels have capitalized. Social media platforms have unfortunately become a vital tool in the sale and marketing of illicit and increasingly deadly drugs.”
McElwee spoke to 1,400 people gathered in Portland at the state’s 5th Annual Opioid Response Summit, which began in 2019 shortly after Gov. Janet Mills took office.
During the summit, Mills announced the state will dedicate $1 million to purchase and distribute test strips to detect xylazine, a powerful animal tranquilizer that is sometimes combined with fentanyl.
The two drugs together have been cited in 11 percent of drug overdoses in the state this year.
“The growing presence of xylazine is making a crisis level situation even worse,” Mills said in a statement from her office. “When mixed with the already highly dangerous fentanyl, xylazine makes drugs more lethal and naloxone — which has saved thousands of lives in Maine — is powerless to reverse its effects.”
The conference brings together law enforcement, behavioral health experts, those in recovery and others interested in finding ways to attack an urgent public health epidemic.
“As we know all too well, fentanyl is the deadliest poison we’ve ever seen on our streets,” McElwee said. “Through May of this year, it’s the cause of the death in approximately 80 percent of overdose deaths in Maine.”
There have been 253 suspected overdose deaths through May, compared with 265 in the same period last year, according to the Maine Drug Data Hub.
Last year, there were 723 fatal overdoses in Maine, a state record.
The state is attempting to address the crisis on multiple levels, including the recent passage of a bill to study the effectiveness of harm reduction health centers, also known as safe injection sites.
In addition, the state budget provides $3.6 million for a substance use disorder treatment center in either Kennebec or Washington county.
There’s also $4.4 million in state funds to be matched by $3 million in opioid settlement funds to pay for things such as medication-assisted treatment programs for those in jail, recovery residence expansions and recovery courts.
Those measures are on top of expanding MaineCare, which made more than 100,000 Mainers eligible for health insurance and of those, 25,000 have received treatment for substance use disorder, according to the governor’s office.
Another area of emphasis has been on the distribution of the overdose reversing drug naloxone, with nearly 325,000 doses released into communities resulting in the reversal of nearly 8,000 overdoses, the governor’s office said.
At the conference, Gordon Smith, director of the state’s opioid response, urged everyone to carry naloxone with them so it’s “everywhere within reach when it’s needed.”
Across the country, someone dies of an overdose “every five minutes,” he said, and almost two Mainers die each day.
Another avenue for progress will come over the next 18 years, when Maine is set to receive $230 million in opioid settlement funds, Attorney General Aaron Frey told conference attendees.
While half of all funds will be eligible for statewide distribution, 30 percent will be paid directly to 39 Maine counties, cities and towns.
That could translate into more than $2 million for Portland, over $2 million for York County and $1.5 million for Bangor over more than a decade, along with millions more for other municipalities.
Frey urged conference-goers to get involved at the local level in helping to shape how those funds are spent.
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