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Janet Mills lays out new strategy to address Maine’s opioid crisis

Robert F. Bukaty | AP
Governor Janet Mills speaks at a news conference in the State House on Wednesday in Augusta. Mills is accompanied by Department of Corrections Commissioner Randy Liberty, left, Director of Opioid Response Gordon Smith, second from right, and Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew. Mills later signed an executive order directing immediate action on the opioid epidemic.

Please go to Bangor Daily News to read the full article.

By Michael Shepherd, BDN Staff

~~Excerpt

AUGUSTA, Maine — In her first targeted response to Maine’s opioid crisis, Gov. Janet Mills signed a Wednesday order aiming to boost addiction treatment and setting aside $1.6 million to expand access to an overdose antidote and recovery coaches in health care settings.
Fighting opioid addiction has been an early priority for the new Democratic governor after fentanyl and heroin drove Maine’s overdose death total to 418 in 2017. The same year, approximately 7 percent of all babies born in the statewere affected by opiates or other drugs. Like many states, Maine has struggled with a lack of treatment capacity. A federal estimate said between 25,000 and 30,000 people here want to enroll in a recovery program but can’t access one. On a single day in 2015, less than 5,300 people were being treated with one of the two most common medications used to treat opioid addiction, according to the federal government.

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