PORTLAND, Maine — Former Gov. Paul LePage on Wednesday proposed allowing some accused of drug crimes who submit to a yearlong treatment program to have criminal records expunged while railing against measures aimed at making drug use safer.
The Republican called a news conference on “crime” at Deering Oaks Park in the heart of Maine’s largest city as he approaches the last part of his race with Gov. Janet Mills. He used it to lay blame on both the Democratic governor and President Joe Biden for the opioid crisis, although overdose deaths have generally risen here and nationally for a decade
Maine topped 600 overdose deaths for the first time in 2021 but is on pace to exceed that sum this year. A massive spike in the last two years is generally attributed to dangerous combinations of opioids — led by deadly fentanyl — and stimulants such as cocaine. Fentanyl seizures at the southern border have surged this year to record levels.
LePage’s remarks on Wednesday, flanked by supporters holding posters referencing “free crack pipe kits” offered by groups in Maine, showed he continues to view the issue largely through a law enforcement lens.
“Janet Mills’ complicity in this drug crisis is a real problem,” the former governor said.
One doctor said LePage’s framing of substance use disorder was rooted in “stigma.”
As governor in 2013, LePage enshrined a soft two-year cap on medication-assisted treatment under MaineCare, the state’s version of Medicaid. He later targeted the elimination of state funding for methadone treatment, favoring another medication subject to more monitoring. That change was not accepted by a divided Legislature.
His tenure was also marked by hostility to the overdose antidote naloxone. In a 2016 veto message, he said it “does not save lives” but “merely extends them until the next overdose.” Two years later, he rejected the Marine Patrol’s plans to carry the drug. State-supplied naloxone reversed 4,300 overdoses between mid-2019 and May, according to state data.
Mills came into office in 2019 with a plan to address the crisis, including by reversing the LePage-era treatment cap. She also hired the first point person on the opioid crisis. The former attorney general has differed with recovery advocates on some issues, but she inked a compromise earlier this year on a Good Samaritan bill that faced a potential veto.
Republicans including LePage have criticized some of her moves, including allowing passage of a 2021 bill making it easier for those caught with more than 2 grams of fentanyl to present evidence they were not trafficking. And the Mills administration set aside the former governor’s plan to build a drug-treatment facility at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, which LePage criticized Wednesday.
The former governor on Wednesday also pitched an extension of Maine’s drug-court program in which those accused of some drug crimes would spend a night in jail and then go through a yearlong treatment program. At the end, he said they could have records expunged.
The governor’s corrections department told WMTW that the LePage-era prison renovation plan was $75 million over budget when they inherited it. In the past three years, Commissioner Randall Liberty said more than 1,000 people in prisons treated for substance use disorders have been released. Another 700 in the system are being treated.
Liberty, who was the Maine State Prison warden under LePage and a former Kennebec County sheriff, said the LePage model “is not best practice” since prisons deal with people at the end of their time in the criminal justice system. It could extend their time in it, he argued.
“What we’re doing now is the gold standard,” Liberty said.
LePage also hit the governor on harm reduction for drug users. He noted a state website that outlines safer drug practices, such as accessing clean syringes. One of the groups mentioned on the site, Maine Access Points, was flagged by the conservative news site Washington Free Beacon for distributing pipes to smoke drugs along with so-called safe-smoking kits aimed at reducing danger.
He railed against that idea and stood by a past suggestion that people revived more than once by naloxone should pay for it.
Dr. Noah Nesin, the former chief medical officer at Penobscot Community Health Care, said LePage’s resistance to naloxone and other harm reduction policies struck him as “inexplicable” and a break from how other conditions are handled.
“Basing an approach to the treatment of opioid use disorder in the terrible stigma that really exacerbates the disease and the public health problem is really a harmful approach,” he said.
