BURLINGTON — For the first time since the opioid crisis started, there are no waiting lists for treatment in all 14 counties, state and city officials said Thursday.
Gov. Phil Scott said the accomplishment was not a moment to “spike the football in the end zone” in celebration.
However, he said “this is a positive milestone for the state and we must take the time to recognize it as such.”
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger offered similar praise.
“This kind of event may feel like it happens a lot in Vermont,” Weinberger said. “People get together, they talk about a community challenge, they say nice things about each other.”
But, Weinberger said the opiod challenge was different because “it forced all of us to understand addiction to opioids in a way that had not been thought of previously.”
Bob Bick, CEO of the Burlington-based social services organization the Howard Center, said that waiting lists have been a chronic problem.
“For the last 15 years,” Bick said, “we have always had a waiting list here at the Chittenden clinic. And in fact, in 2013, we had over 750 names on that waiting list.”
Now that the waiting lists have been cleared, Bick said the center will be able to operate “like any other acute medical facility” and treat people seeking care as soon as they present themselves. Previously people had to wait for weeks for treatment.
Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said that immediate access to care is important because the time between when a person decides to seek treatment and actually receives it can be risky, not to mention stressful for their loved ones.
Weinberger stressed that Vermont’s addiction crisis was not over.
“The number of overdose deaths, which is our fundamental measure of our success here,” Weinberger said, “is still going the wrong direction.”
Weinberger said that overdose deaths nationally hovered around 10,000 a year up to 1990. Since then, he said, that national rate has risen dramatically to 65,000 overdose deaths in 2016.
The trend in Vermont, Weinberger said, has been only slightly less severe.
Weinberger added that progress has been made over the last decade in addressing specific drugs, but the crisis has persisted because the drugs causing the most deaths have changed.
In the past two or three years, Weinberger said, fentanyl and carfentanil — two exceptionally potent drugs — have been largely responsible for a continued upward trend in overdose deaths.
Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine prefaced his remarks by saying that he was going to deliver “perhaps some harsh comments that we don’t want to hear.”
“This crisis is afflicting an entire generation,” he said, and “to have an expectation that we will suddenly see a major change in the curve (of overdose deaths) isn’t realistic at this point in time.”
Levine emphasized that addiction is a chronic condition and that people are prone to relapse.
“There’s a population out there that still has the risk of becoming one of those statistics,” Levine said, “even when we think we’ve done as much as we can for them.”
Around 80 percent of individuals addicted to opioids, Levine said, “are not actively seeking treatment.”
Levine said even though the waitlists are now clear, “we’re not actually accommodating the needs of the majority of those with the disorder — not because we haven’t had access for them, but because they haven’t availed themselves yet of what we have to offer.”
