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In recent years, substance use disorder has devastated families around Maine, and the country. While opioid overdose deaths declined last year for the first time in years, more than 600 Mainers still lost their lives to the disease. Those numbers also do not account for the thousands of people whose lives have been derailed by addiction.
Syringe exchange programs — places where people who inject drugs can bring in dirty needles and get clean ones — have been around for decades, but they proliferated in Maine during the pandemic.
Decades of research has shown that such programs, which also help connect people to services and medical care, are effective ways to reduce the transmission of blood-borne diseases and keep people out of the hospital.
Longtime state rules limited those programs to a 1-for-1 exchange, meaning they could only provide one sterile syringe for every used one a person brought in. That rule was suspended in 2020 by Governor Janet Mills and later increased to a 1:100 ratio. The American Medical Association hailed the change and urged other states to follow suit.
Now, however, some city leaders are calling for a reversion back to the 1:1 rule, citing concerns over needle waste in public spaces. Advocates, however, say that going back to those kind of limits will only serve to spread disease and make the overall public health problem worse.
This week, Monitor reporter Emily Bader takes a long look at the numbers and explores where we might go from here.
— Kate |
