Opioid crisis is candidate’s priority
Healey’s Republican rival faults her, lauds Gov. Baker
Jay McMahon, who lost his son — a veteran — to drug addiction, says he will “tackle” the opioid crisis more effectively than Attorney General Maura Healey if elected.
“The government programs are a failure,” the Republican challenger to Healey said. “The deaths by opioid addiction are increasing and are still are. We’re talking a lot of talk, a lot of money is going somewhere so where is that money going? Everybody wants to say it’s going into rehabilitation, well, not an effective rehabilitation.”
McMahon has a threepronged approach to battling the opioid crisis, he said: successful and effective rehabilitation; “dry up” the source of heroin and fentanyl; and extreme prosecution of drug traffickers.
McMahon, speaking at a meeting yesterday with the Boston Herald Editorial Board, stressed that extreme prosecution wouldn’t apply to those struggling with addiction.
“I’m not interested in incarcerating the opioid addict, I’m interested in giving them real rehabilitation,” he said.
McMahon claims the opioid crisis has worsened since Attorney General Healey entered office.
About 100 fewer people died in 2017 than in 2016, according to state records.
In 2016, 2,154 people in Massachusetts died from an opioid overdose.
In 2017, 2,069 people died of the same cause — nearly 3 times the number from 5 years ago, with over 80 percent of overdoses being driven by dangerous and illegal narcotics, like fentanyl.
Last year, first responders in Massachusetts administered more than 20,000 doses of naloxone, a life-saving drug that can reverse the affects of a drug overdose.
“To me the credit does not go to Maura Healey, it goes to Governor Charlie Baker because Charlie has championed the funds for first responders for Narcan, so now everyone’s got Narcan,” McMahon said. “We can do so much better if we go through and examine the rehabilitation and start doing the real rehabilitation with some real physicians . ... Let’s do it right.”