Governor signs bills to combat opioid crisis
PROVIDENCE – Sen. Elizabeth A. Crowley (D-Dist. 16, Central Falls and Pawtucket) knows all too well that there are two faces to opioid medication use, one that helps people with a serious injury or devastating illness and the other a sad one from the harm they can cause.
It was with that in mind that Crowley set out in the past legislative session working with her Senate peers and also members of the House of Representatives to create new laws seeking to reduce the negative impact of opioid drugs on the state’s residents.
And on Monday, Crowley, a member of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, saw three of the bills she worked on among the four Gov. Gina Raimondo signed into law during a ceremony at the Recovery Navigation Program in Providence.
Crowley’s bills included two she worked on with Rep. Arthur J. Corvese and (D-Dist.-55, North Providence), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Dennis M. Canario, a Deputy Majority Leader, strengthening controls on synthetic opioids, such as adding fentanyl and similar opioids to the list of controlled sub- stances and increasing criminal penalties for illegal trafficking of the drugs.
Crowley saw another bill she and Rep. Mia Ackerman (D-Dist. 45, Cumberland, Lincoln) guided to approval, H-5975A, S-546aa, allowing for electronic prescribing of opioid variants and reporting to the Department of Health also signed by Gov. Raimondo.
The fourth bill signed by the governor was sponsored by Representative Diaz and Senator Archambault, H6307, S-493A, and requires health professionals to discuss addiction potential
before prescribing opiates.
Crowley said on Monday that her personal experiences with the opioid crisis include the loss of a friend who began treatment of a back injury he suffered with an opioid medication and then fell into an ever worsening problem of addiction. “Unfortunately, he died,” Crowley said while relating how her family friend could not break free of the downward spiral once it began.
She too experienced the use of opioid medications when she recently fell and broke her right elbow and shoulder and was given opioids for pain as initial emergency treatment and again at the hospital.
The bill she worked on with Ackerman does not eliminate such uses, she explained, but instead will help make sure they are properly used.
“It is not to prevent doctors from prescribing drugs that are needed by patients, that is not the intent of law. What the law will do, she explained, is show where someone may be getting too much of an opioid medication or from too many sources, and provide the Department of Health with information that can be ultimately be used to change policies.
“I think it is a good thing that we will monitor what kinds of drugs are being given to patients because that is where it starts,” Crowley said.
Crowley said she was proud to have three bills included in the state’s efforts to address the opioid crisis and believes they will make a difference for Rhode Islanders.
“The idea behind it is to have a tracking system, to see how prevalent it is, and to save lives,” Crowley said of the state’s new package of laws.
Ackerman on Monday said that members of the House and Senate had put together legislation targeting various aspects of the opioid crisis in the past legislative session and carried through with passage of a number of bills including those signed by the Governor on Monday. “Each bill deals with the crisis in a different way to help stem the crisis, and I am proud to be a part of those efforts,” she said.
The law she worked on with Crowley, establishes a system for physicians to transmit prescriptions electronically, a method of reducing pharmacy errors and fraudulent prescriptions, according to Ackerman.
The new law includes a three-year timeframe to allow the medical communi- ty time to convert their systems, she explained.
Opioid antagonists, such as naloxone, drugs used to reverse opioid effects, will also be added to the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program provided the information collected is used for statistical, research or educational purposes only, according to Ackerman.
“We need to attack it and this is a great start, but we need to continue and take more action steps until we can eradicate the problem,” she said.
In the future, Ackerman said the state should consider improving counseling options for those affected by the opioid crisis and also to do more in the way of collecting data on how Rhode Islanders are being affected by it. “We need to know where our trouble spots are and then see how we can improve them,” she said.
Governor Gina M. Raimondo was joined by Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott and the legislators involved in passage of the bills at her signing of the legislation.
“This epidemic is our single greatest public health crisis, and the legislation I signed today will help our state fight back and save lives,” Raimondo said in a statement on the new laws. “I hear stories from families hurt by overdose everywhere I go,” the governor said.
“Fentanyl-related overdose deaths in Rhode Island have spiked in the past year, and I commend the General Assembly for passing legis- lation that specifically targets this problem. By ensuring that patients are aware of the risks of opioid addiction and increasing the penalties for trafficking fentanyl, we are steps closer to winning this fight,” Raimondo said.
The new legislation allows Rhode Island to address the opioid overdose crisis “in a more comprehensive way,” according to Alexander.
According to the Governor’s office, in 2016, 336 Rhode Islanders died of drug overdoses, up from 290 in 2015. This increase in overdose deaths is largely associated with increased use of synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl. Fentanyl-related overdose deaths accounted for 57 percent of all overdose deaths in 2016, up from 47 percent in 2015, according to the Governor’s office. The trend in Rhode Island mirrors the regional trend and trends in many states nationally.
Rhode Island’s opioid overdose crisis has been one of Governor Raimondo’s top priorities since she took office, according to the Governor’s office. In August of 2015, she signed an Executive Order to create the Overdose Prevention and Intervention Task Force. Last month, the Governor signed a follow-up Executive Order to implement Rhode Island’s opioid crisis Action Plan and announced that CVS Health would be opening an Opioid Center of Excellence in Woonsocket. The Center of Excellence will provide outpatient treatment for Rhode Islanders suffering from substance use disorder.