$3M to stem N.H.-Mass. drug flow
Case to bolster enforcement, cooperation along state line
Almost $3 million in grant money will go toward eradicating drug trafficking in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Attorney General Maura Healey told the Herald yesterday. “I’m thrilled,” Healey said during a meeting with the Boston Herald editorial board. “We really have focused on trying to build out robust enforcement and part of it was securing this allowance to work across state lines with other state and federal agents as well as local police departments to do this work, so it was very important.” In a partnership with New Hampshire, the money from the DOJ’s Community Oriented Policing Services AntiHeroin Task Force grant program will stem the flow of drugs into and through the Massachusetts-New Hampshire corridor. The work will build on Healey’s Fentanyl Strike Force, which was created in 2016 using a $1 million grant through the same program. “We have arrested and prosecuted hundreds of people for drug trafficking,” Healey said. “We have taken off the streets millions and millions of lethal doses of heroin and fentanyl — and it’s fentanyl, of course, that’s killing people right now in big numbers.” Since its launch, the task force has seized approximately 164 kilograms of heroin and fentanyl, 8,900 opioid pills, 67 vehicles, 51 firearms, $5.6 million in cash and has arrested 169 suspects. The close to $3 million will now allow both states to build on current work, expand their scope and geographic reach and support a closer cooperation in combating fentanyl and drug trafficking across New England. The intensified enforcement to end drug trafficking in the region will be a vital step in battling the opioid epidemic, Healey said. “From the time I was running all the way through today it has been my top priority,” she said. The Attorney General has led a number of initiatives in her first term related to combating the crisis, including negotiating with the makers of naloxone, the life-saving drug that can reverse the effects of a opioid overdose, to lower the cost. She was the first to propose making the trafficking of fentanyl a crime, and helped put an end to doctors who were prescribing illegal amounts of opioids and in some cases taking cash instead of Medicaid. Healey’s office worked with the legislation, Gov. Charlie Baker and the Massachusetts Medical Society to change the law around prescribing and dosing practices. In addition to focusing on the trafficking issue if reelected for a second term, Healey said she would like to do more on treatment. “I’ve long been a proponent and folks in my office have spent a lot of time answering hotline calls to try to help get people into treatment facilities and beds and we don’t have enough in terms of the supply or the kinds of beds, which need to be longer term,” Healey said. “We need to do more as a state and that’s something I want to focus on.”