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Brad Farrin of Norridgewock represents District 3 in the Maine Senate and is the Senate Republican lead on the Transportation Committee.
When the state first created the Maine Recovery Council in 2022, the intent was to stand up a quasi-governmental structure to administrate some of the approximately $235 million Maine will receive from its participation in a class action against the pharmaceutical and drug distribution industries. Over the next 18 years, the council — through the Maine Recovery Fund — will receive about $117 million from the National Opioids Settlement to fight substance use that continues to claim Mainers’ lives every day.
Through a collection of settlements, drug companies like Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma, among others, and distributors such as Walmart, CVS and Walgreens acknowledged their respective roles in the nation’s opioid crisis that has gripped many Americans in a cycle of drug dependence. When you layer in a somewhat porous southern border that has flooded our country with deadly fentanyl, our opioid crisis has become deadlier than ever.
After the Legislature created the council in April 2022 through PL 2021 Ch. 661, Maine’s attorney general entered into a memorandum of understanding in June of that year. It assigned half of the total settlement to the council and split the other half between Maine’s counties and participating municipalities and the attorney general’s office.
Funds were to be disbursed according to uses approved in the settlement, including treatment and recovery of those with opioid use disorder, prevention of overprescribing and improper dispensing of opioids, and harm reduction through the increased availability of naloxone to prevent overdose deaths. Other approved uses include supporting research and prevention programs at the state and local level.
After its 15 members were appointed, the council held its first meeting over a year ago in November 2022. With millions of dollars already arriving from the settlement and more on the way, the meeting was a beacon of hope for many as the process of distributing those funds to programs across the state had finally begun.
Yet in the 12 months since that first meeting, the council hasn’t distributed a cent of the $17 million sitting idly in the fund. Meanwhile, since their first meeting last November, 537 people have died from a drug overdose in Maine. In all, Maine saw 10,483 overdoses with 723 of those being fatal in 2022. So far this year, those numbers stand at 7,538 and 462, respectively.
Yes, the overdose rate may be down from last year, but likely not because of anything done by the council. Its yearlong inability to organize itself and start executing its mission is a failure of both the council’s leadership and the council as a whole. None is spared any blame here, nor should they be.
In fact, it even took the council a year just to engage the public. They asked the public to weigh in on potential uses of the funds the state will receive at a forum held last month in Augusta. Some who testified offered strategic guidance for the fund while others educated council members on the effects of opioid use.
Still, some were clearly advocating for their own organizations similar to what you’d see during any round-robin charitable funding process. I found it distasteful and not what this is about. What good is distributing the funds if there is no strategic plan or goal that comes with it? You’re simply wasting money.
We need to address strategically the so-called legs of the prevention stool — education, recovery and treatment, and enforcement. Some who testified last month said we shouldn’t dedicate any funds to law enforcement. Yet the memorandum of understanding specifically allows that through officer-level prevention and diversionary programs.
Whatever path the council chooses, just give us a plan and execute it. Each overdose death is a tragedy for a Maine family; a preventable one takes that tragedy to a whole other level.
My frustration and that of many others lies in the fact that we’ve seen nothing but a year of inaction while overdose deaths keep tragically piling up. That has to change.