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A Vermont Senate panel this week discussed planned adjustments to a House-passed bill that, in its current form, would create and fund two overdose prevention centers in the state, where other people could simply use ingredients currently banned in a medically supervised setting. as part of a pilot program to curb the current epidemic of drug-related deaths.
The Senate Health and Welfare Committee plans to vote next week on an amendment that would make sweeping changes to the proposal, adding restricting the pilot program to single people in the city of Burlington, where officials have expressed interest in hosting a facility. According to the House, the bill would create and fund two overdose prevention centers (OPCs) in parts of the state that have not yet been reported.
State grant investment for the program would also be reduced in the revised text to $1. 1 million for the single-site program, down from $2 million in the previous edition of the bill.
The provisions of the committee’s surprising amendment were made at the request of one of the interested parties, adding the mayor and the Burlington Fire Department and the Vermont Medical Society, as well as Senate committee chair Sen. Ginny Lyons (D), whose district is south of Burlington. .
Another update would include that the OPC would have to offer drug testing (a Lyon request), possibly referring to positive drug identity tests and adultery.
Meanwhile, an added review at the request of the Burlington Fire Department would require on-site professionals with CPR, overdose response, first aid and wound care education, as well as medical testing in the event of a need for additional emergency care.
The amendment maintains the total of $300,000 provided for in the bill passed by the House to examine the effect of the pilot project. That money would come from the state’s special opioid fund.
The committee’s revisions would also restructure the bill’s language to separate OPC provisions in one segment and provisions related to needle and syringe expansion proposed in the bill in another.
At a hearing Wednesday, Lyons noted that the proposed amendment lacked language for more UCIs in the future.
“In a way, we’re restricting it to Burlington,” he said. In the future. . . There is nothing here that allows for an expansion, if there is budget available. »
However, when the committee returned to the bill on Friday, Lyons also noted that the new language “prevents” other OPCs from being legal at a later date.
The revised bill also includes amended provisions on criminal immunity for OPC personnel, asset holders, and others, so that they are not subject to arrest or prosecution as a result of good faith efforts to prevent overdoses.
Lyons first said at Friday’s hearing that he would like to put the bill and others into effect until the end of the day, though the panel ultimately postponed action until next week.
One of the disruptions that came up in the latest discussion over the proposal for how CPOs would deal with the threat of opioid smoking in institutions, which may simply create more disruption for others close to others than injection drug use. However, members seem to agree that the state Department of Health may take this factor into account when developing guidelines for the program.
Other topics of discussion among lawmakers in Friday’s roughly 40-minute debate included whether city approval would be needed to approve an overdose prevention center, whether other people would test their drugs and then sell them to others, the clash between the state and the federal government. government control and whether Vermont itself may be guilty if it is found to be tolerant of drug use.
Lyons suggested the panel not discuss those issues, which she said have already surfaced in invited testimony and public comment at several hearings this week and last week. “We’ve looked at all of this,” he said. We received the answers in our testimony. “
Before concluding Friday’s hearing, Lyons said the panel would return to notable issues, such as those related to state responsibility.
“We want to consolidate this,” he said. We’re going to finalize the bill on Wednesday, but it’s possible we’ll vote on Thursday. “
If signed into law, Vermont would join Rhode Island and Minnesota in permitting facilities, where other people can use illicit drugs in the presence of medical professionals and connect to various services in addition to treatment.
Sponsored by Rep. Taylor Small (L/D) and 28 House colleagues, the bill is an attempt by lawmakers to allow overdose prevention centers following Gov. Phil Scott’s (R) veto of a 2022 measure that would have established a task force to create a plan to open the sites.
Although the overdose prevention sites law passed the Senate this session, it still faces a conceivable veto from the governor.
“I just don’t think any government entity is in the business of allowing addicts to those illegal drugs,” the governor said of the measure in place when it passed the House earlier this year.
Scott wrote in his 2022 veto message about an earlier law that “it is contradictory to divert resources from demonstrated harm relief methods to planning injection sites without transparent knowledge about the effectiveness of this approach. “
Prior to the Senate committee’s vote, members heard testimony and obtained written comments from various officials and organizations at various hearings.
In one of the most recent meetings, Burlington’s new mayor, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, who took office earlier this month, said that, like outgoing Mayor Miro Weinberger, “I also strongly support H. 72 and the path it offers our citizens. “The City of Burlington will be piloting an overdose prevention center in our community.
Weinberger, who addressed the panel at an earlier hearing, said addressing the opioid crisis has been the most sensible precedent in the city since 2015.
“I’ve long supported overdose prevention sites as a strategy,” he said. “I’m getting more and more specific and I think more and more that this is something we want to do urgently. “
The proposal has advocacy teams such as the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, National Harm Reduction Coalition, American Diabetes Association, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, Johnson Health Center, Broken No More, Recovery Vermont, the Vermont Association for Addiction Recovery and Mental Health, as well as various individual public commentators.
The National Center for Harm Reduction, for example, has called overdose prevention centers “a component of a comprehensive public conditioning technique to reduce the harms of drug use. “
“They cannot save the dangerous use of drugs and the harms related to them,” the organization said in its testimony. “However, knowledge shows that they can be remarkably effective and cost-effective, and the lives of others who use drugs, as well as the protection and health of our communities. “
However, some state officials told the committee that overdose prevention centers (OPCs) are adequate for Vermont.
“My position is that while I recognize that OPCs can have many potential benefits and be part of a multi-pronged strategy for the opioid epidemic, they may not constitute the most productive option for a state like Vermont right now,” Mark Levine said. , commissioner of the Vermont Health Division, said in his testimony that services are most productive “where other people who want those facilities can access them seamlessly and temporarily; Those are higher-population areas, neighborhoods where injection drug use is more prevalent. “
New York City, he noted, has its two overdose prevention sites in spaces that match that description.
Levine is also under pressure to keep other people from driving to and from overdose prevention sites, which they would possibly have to do in many rural Vermont spaces.
“VT does not have a population density as high as that of drug users or enough public access to allow other people to use the sites regularly,” he wrote. “This provides other people who don’t live within walking distance the option of staying nearby or on-site, having a designated driver, driving after use (totally unacceptable), setting up shuttle services to send other people (apparently, RI is doing this), or not using the OPC.
“If other people drive into a place and then drive,” he added, “who’s to blame for it?”
Rep. Eric Maguire (right), who also opposed the bill, argued that while OPCs may be an appropriate option for Vermont in the future, ultimately the state has the infrastructure to make the task worthwhile. He also noted that those sites may simply violate federal law.
“Right now, the state of Vermont doesn’t have the infrastructure or the ongoing care for this harm relief model,” he told the panel. “It’s not sanctioned through SAMHSA. . . It opposes the law under the Controlled Substances Act. “
“There may come a time when they will be sanctioned by our national fitness organizations and sanctioned under harm relief laws,” he added, “and then we can think about crossing that bridge. “
Weinberger, a former mayor of Burlington, told panel members that OPCs not only prevent overdose deaths, but also link drug users to treatment and other services, benefiting others who can’t participate in other outreach.
“An understated point in the debate is that studies show that those services decrease — not only do they not increase, but they decrease — crime and riots in the immediate vicinity of services,” he said. “I think that surprises a lot of people. “
Weinberger said the sites may not work in all areas of Vermont, especially more rural areas, but said that doesn’t explain why rejecting facilities in denser areas like Burlington.
Meanwhile, Scott Pavek, a substance use policy analyst for the city of Burlington and a member of the state’s Opioid Regulatory Advisory Committee and Substance Abuse Prevention Council, suggested lawmakers be complacent about the existing overdose crisis.
“Recently, this committee heard testimony suggesting that overdose deaths in the state had plateaued,” he said, wary of “the rush to point to a still unacceptable number of Vermonters lost to preventable overdose deaths as evidence that our methods of reparation and harm relief are sufficient. “
A saying heard during his own recovery, Pavek added, is that “half-measures don’t do us any good. “
“I inspire lawmakers to use this proverb when comparing our state’s harm relief formula and remediation services,” he said. “They’ve heard about promising new approaches to addressing the overdose crisis that seem to me half-measures compared to the usefulness of overdose prevention sites. “
Also this month, the Vermont Senate passed a measure that would identify a task force to examine whether and how to allow healing access to psychedelics in the state. If the bill passes, a report from the task force with recommendations on how to use these substances will be presented to parliament in November. As originally introduced, this bill would have also legalized the use and ownership of psilocybin, however, lawmakers on the Senate Health and Welfare Committee rejected that article last week to focus on the task force.
Although Rhode Island and Minnesota passed laws allowing drug intake sites, New York City became the first U. S. jurisdiction to take drugs. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (CDC) has announced the opening of locally licensed harm relief centers in November 2021, and the government has reported positive life-saving effects.
An initial study published by the American Medical Association (AMA) found that the facilities reduced the risk of overdose, deterred people from using drugs in public, and offered other ancillary gyms to people who used illicit substances. And a separate study published by AMA Backlog last year found that the centers did not lead to an increase in crime despite a significant reduction in arrests.
Meanwhile, the federal government has been scrambling to open an overdose prevention center in Philadelphia, with Biden’s leadership arguing that the facilities violate federal law. Earlier this month, the court in charge of the case granted the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the organizers’ challenge. .
The Supreme Court rejected a request to hear the case in October 2021.
First, the Justice Department blocked the Philadelphia-based nonprofit from opening the overdose prevention center during the Trump administration. Supporters had hoped the branch would cede factor during the presidency of Joe Biden, who has promoted harm relief policies as an option to criminalization, but the parties failed to reach an agreement that would allow the facility to open despite months of “good faith” negotiations.
Congressional investigators have pointed to the “uncertainty” of the federal government’s position on such facilities, noting last November that lawmakers could temporarily resolve the challenge by proposing an amendment inspired by the one that allowed medical marijuana legislation to be implemented without government interference. Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Nora Volkow, has tacitly endorsed the concept of allowing intake sites, arguing that evidence has shown that such amenities can prevent overdose deaths.
Volkow declined to say in particular what he thinks deserves to happen with the ongoing lawsuit, but said intake sites that have been investigated “have been shown to save a [percentage of] patients from overdose. “
Rahul Gupta, the White House drug czar, said the Biden administration is contemplating broader drug policy harm relief proposals, adding permits for supervised intake sites, and has even gone so far as to recommend imaginable decriminalization.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued two programs in December 2021 to examine how intake sites and other harm relief policies can help address the drug crisis.
Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), said it was critical to explore “all options” to reduce overdose deaths, which could include authorizing sites of illegal ingredient intake if evidence supports their effectiveness.
Justice Department Investigating Marijuana-Related Businesses Over COVID Relief Loans, Industry Sources Say
Image courtesy of Dima Solomin.
Justice Department Investigating Marijuana-Related Businesses Over COVID Relief Loans, Industry Sources Say
Ben Adlin, editor-in-chief of Marijuana Moment, has been professionally covering hashish and other drug policy issues since 2011. He was previously a news editor at Leafly, an associate editor at the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and a member of the Chorus at Public. Issues. Lives in Washington State.