HARPSWELL

In 2016, 376 people died due to drug overdose in Maine.

Those figures from the Office of the Maine Attorney General led the Maine Legislature to create a task force to address an opioid crisis that is a statewide issue.

This week the task force released its recommendations.

“I’m happy with the recommendations we made,” said Rep. Joyce “Jay” McCreight, D-Harpswell.

The representative served as co-chairperson of the task force, which she said represented a good mix of experts and legislators with different perspectives.

“I felt the committee worked really well together. It was a blend of legislators and community experts, and I think a pretty good distribution of expertise in those community experts,” said McCreight. “The legislators were balanced: Democrat, Republican, House and Senate.”

The final report has a number of recommendations for addressing the opioid crisis, from promoting drug-take-back programs to developing additional drug courts. A major focus of the task force was increasing access to treatment.

“The gold standard right now is intensive medication assisted treatment,” said McCreight. “So it’s not just something like suboxone that helps with the dependence or addiction, it’s counseling and case management and follow up.

“We need more providers who are willing to prescribe suboxone,” she added, “and then to link them to case management, therapy (and) workforce development.”

To create those networks, the task force recommended that the Department of Health and Human Resources look into adopting a hub-and-spoke model of treatment, similar to what is used in Vermont.

“The recommendation around the hub-and-spoke model is a model that does that,” said McCreight. “It’s not necessarily new programs, but it’s linking programs. So a primary care practice might link with a practice that’s offering case management linking with workforce training kinds of programs.”

Not every recommendation that McCreight supported made it into the final report, which was a collaborative effort. Important harm reduction measures, such as needle exchange programs, she said, didn’t have broad support for inclusion in the end product. But just because something didn’t make it into the report doesn’t mean the Legislature shouldn’t consider it, McCreight added.

“There’s nothing that we recommended that I don’t think was an important recommendation and a priority,” she said. “I guess I felt a real connection with the interest in doing more about harm reduction.”

One recommendation that McCreight did push to get included — and ultimately was — in the final report was to request that the Legislature ask the Office of the Revisor of Statutes to adopt language that aligns with current terminology related to substance use disorders.

“Part of our problem is stigma, seeing this as a moral failing, and to change attitude you need to tweak language,” said McCreight, comparing it to how the language has changed around intellectual disabilities in culture. “I think it’s so critical as a kind of umbrella issue.

“So when we’re talking about addicts, or more pejorative terms that imply moral failing,” she added, “you’re not as disposed to work toward treatment, work toward preventions, work toward harm reduction.”

As a task force, the group could not submit legislation, but they could recommend it, and the various legislative members of the task force are on key committees to shepherd the bills to passage. McCreight serves on the Health and Human Services and Judiciary committees, which will be looking at legislation related to some of the task force’s recommendations.

“Without fail, everyone on the task force committed to continue to advocate for the recommendations to come to fruition,” she said. “It will take continued advocacy to do our best to get those recommendations to happen.”

McCreight also emphasized that the task force’s report was not intended to be a panacea for the opioid crisis.

“Everybody also realizes that this is a step in the process,” she said. “There’s more work to do, and if there’s anything we didn’t cover, we need to keep working.”

A full list of the task force’s recommendations can be found in the report.

nstrout@timesrecord.com