Bangor saw reductions in both the number of suspected drug overdoses and fatal overdoses in 2023 compared with years prior — while the same numbers in Portland and Lewiston increased.
Bangor police reported the city saw 222 confirmed and suspected overdoses in 2023, 17 of which were fatal. This marked a more than 18 percent decrease from the 273 overdoses Bangor saw in 2022, 38 of which were fatal. It continues a downward trend from 2021, when the city recorded 334 overdoses, 39 of which were fatal.
Those numbers, however, don’t include overdoses in which a friend or bystander administers Naloxone, a nasal spray that reverses a drug overdose, and the person is taken to a hospital without police being called.
The dip in nonfatal and fatal overdoses in Bangor is an encouraging trend in the opioid crisis that has raged across Maine for years and appeared to only get worse. There are likely multiple reasons why overdoses are trending downward, such as statewide efforts to increase access to naloxone and investing in new and expanded treatment and recovery facilities, said Gordon Smith, Maine’s governor-appointed director of opioid response.
“In Bangor specifically, credit should be given to the strong support for public health, treatment, and recovery by many city organizations and leadership,” Smith said.
Fresh Start Sober Living, the Together Place Peer Run Recovery Center and Wabanaki Health and Wellness are a few of the local organizations offering recovery services such as medication assisted treatment, case management and housing for those who are sober.
Wellspring in Bangor also offers mental health and addiction treatment, as well as detox beds.
The Bangor Health Equity Alliance, meanwhile, distributes naloxone and fentanyl test strips to keep people who use drugs as safe as possible if they’re not ready to get sober.
The city’s public health department also launched is Bangor Community Action Team last year — the first of its kind in the state — aimed at responding to nonemergency calls that don’t require a police response.
While the team wasn’t created solely to tackle drug use in the city, a large portion of their calls involve assisting Bangor residents who are homeless, struggling with mental health disorders and substance use disorder. The team is then able to build a relationship with those people and connect them with local resources.
Statewide, Maine saw 8,576 nonfatal overdoses from January 2023 to November 2023, which is a 4.4 percent reduction from the 8,974 nonfatal overdoses that happened in the same period in 2022, according to the latest monthly overdose report, issued by the University of Maine and Maine attorney general’s office.
Of Maine’s nonfatal overdoses between January and November 2023, Penobscot County had 1,173 nonfatal overdoses, according to the report. This means the county with 11 percent of the state’s population still held 14 percent of the states’ overdoses from that time period despite Bangor’s local overdose decline.
While Bangor’s overdose numbers have continued to dwindle in recent years, overdoses in Maine’s two largest cities — Portland and Lewiston — increased in some way year over year.
Portland, which has more than double Bangor’s population, saw 527 overdoses in 2023, 47 of which were fatal, Portland police announced last week. That marked a slight increase from the 518 overdoses the city had in 2022, 51 of which were fatal.
The number of confirmed overdoses in Lewiston dropped from 334 in 2022 to 243 in 2023 — a 27 percent decrease — according to Lt. Derrick St. Laurent of the Lewiston Police department.
Lewiston’s suspected fatal overdoses, however, increased from 40 in 2022 to 45 in 2023, St. Laurent said.
