Tackling opioid crisis
Tackling the opioid crisis headon is a daunting task. Innovative approaches have yielded success, but we must be careful to stop short of radical fixes, lest we exacerbate the very problem we are trying to remedy.
A delegation of state legislators is going to Portugal to review its decriminalization of opioids this week. Senate President Karen Spilka, in a press release, called the trip a “unique opportunity” to gain insight into “possible solutions” for the ongoing opioid crisis, as well as discussing economic and security issues.
Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport is leading the group of 14 legislative colleagues on the journey. “We’re going to keep an open mind,” Rodrigues said about drug policy. “We don’t know if it’s a model that can be replicated because we have a different criminal justice system in the U.S. and we have a different health care delivery system in the U.S. But it would be interesting to learn from them, to hear from them, what they’ve learned since they’ve switched to this model.”
The law passed in Portugal in 2001 still punishes drug dealers for trafficking their product but users — those holding less than a 1-day supply of any particular drug — are sent to a commission, which consists of a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker. There the user will be educated about treatment and available resources.
But Mayor Martin J. Walsh said last week, “Decriminalization is not the way to go. You don’t have to study more than a day to know that if you don’t do drugs, you won’t be a drug addict.”
Gov. Charlie Baker argued that for the past 15 years there has been a “huge overuse” of opioid medication, and he was quick to cast doubt on a decriminalization option.
“They are clearly extremely addictive,” Baker said of the drugs. “I’m open to thoughts and ideas, but I would argue that we had a system in the United States called ‘prescribing,’ which was legal and that created the crisis we have right now, so I’m going to be a kind of a hard sell on the notion that that’s the right way to fix this.”
There is no doubt that the decriminalization of opioids would lead to experimentation of the substances by some people who may be predisposed to developing an addiction.
Decriminalization opens the floodgates to a host of problems and we do not have the requisite number of facilities and resources to absorb them at the moment.
Chelsea police Chief Brian Kyes, president of the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs Association, said most departments in the state are already connecting people struggling with addiction to services and resources in their respective communities.
“It’s the old adage, we repeat it over and over and over again. We’re not going to arrest our way out of the problem,” Kyes said. “As a police chief — if someplace else in Massachusetts or another country — if someone is doing something better or innovative, I’m all over it. But my takeback is we in general in this state, we are doing that already.”
We should stay the course in our approach to his problem, but anything we can glean from Portugal must be weighed for discussion.