The House Judiciary Committee is crafting what it hopes will be a “life-saving” piece of legislation addressing the critical moments following a drug or alcohol overdose.
It’s what’s known as a Good Samaritan act — a law designed to encourage people to seek medical assistance for themselves or for a companion who has overdosed by granting immunity from prosecution for certain crimes.
The bill defines a strict set of drug-related crimes that people would be exempt from if they seek medical assistance during an overdose — possessing, dispensing, or being under the influence of a drug, for instance — but it does not offer blanket immunity.
House Judiciary chair Rep. William Lippert says the bill will likely open a floodgate of discussion about drug abuse.
“From the beginning, I had made clear that I’m going to use this bill to open up the discussion and to tackle the broader issue of opiate, methamphetamines, and prescription drug abuse in Vermont,” Lippert said. “I see us building a larger bill with a number of other components.”
One possible addition to the bill would allow people to administer naloxone — a drug that can reverse an opiate overdose — without a prescription.
The committee heard Wednesday from two directors who have pioneered programs in Boston and Chicago that dispense naloxone both to EMTs and to family, friends and coworkers of opiate addicts.
Alexander Walley, director of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Opioid Overdose Prevention Program, said 17,000 people have been trained to administer naloxone in Massachusetts. The program has made it a priority to distribute naloxone to family and friends of addicts; roughly one third of the participants are non drug-users.
Both Massachusetts and Illinois have laws that are similar to the one under consideration in House Judiciary, but those states also exempt physicians from liability for prescribing naloxone, which allows them to administer the antidote to emergency responders, drug users, and family and friends.
Both Walley and Dan Bigg, the director and co-founder of the Chicago Recovery Alliance, refuted the committee’s primary concern — that, by condoning the distribution of naloxone and thus putting a safety net in place for people who overdose, the state would encourage opiate use.
Administering naloxone, which is either injected or administered through a nasal spray, to heroin addicts is like giving “garlic to a vampire,” Bigg said. Walley also described a naloxone antidote as a very undesirable experience and said there is no evidence in Massachusetts that it has encouraged drug use.
Bigg’s one point of caution was cost: Naloxone is technically a generic medicine but a single producer has maintained a monopoly on it, which means it’s pricey.
The Chicago Recovery Alliance benefits from a preferential treatment arrangement but he told the lawmakers that if that falls through, “in one fell swoop the cost of naloxone could put us out of business.”
Bigg also cautioned the Judiciary Committee against setting up a “bait and switch” law that fails to protect people from “the No. 1 charge that will be filed against them” — drug-induced homicide.
The Judiciary Committee also heard from Patrick Lapore, a 34-year-old drug user living in Burlington.
Lapore has used heroin for 16 years. He was put in prison after he called 9-1-1 for a friend who had overdosed on heroin. Charged with delivery of heroin, he was jailed for nine months, and was recently released from the St. Albans Correctional Facility.
He gave lawmakers a blunt account of the harrowing aftermath of the overdose. Shortly after shooting up together, Lapore found his friend on the floor “completely blue.”
His first thought was, “If this guy dies, I’m going away for a long time.” He started wiping his fingerprints off the doorknobs and chewing up the SIM chip in his cell phone. He said fellow addicts in prison were incredulous: “Why did you call?”
Lapore has been sober since he was incarcerated, but he told lawmakers that if he were in that situation again, he probably wouldn’t make that call.
Lapore, who has witnessed several overdoses and has overdosed himself — he lost 40 percent of his hearing from lack of oxygen to his brain — told the committee that Vermont law deters people from seeking medical help.
Good Samaritan laws in other states allow addicts to abide by an “etiquette,” according to Lapore — don’t throw needles on the street, don’t sell to pregnant women, call if your friend overdoses.
“That etiquette doesn’t exist in Vermont,” Lapore said. “If someone ODs you get out of there. … Your primary thought is self-preservation.”
If he’d had naloxone on hand? “I would have most definitely hit him. I would have hit him until he came up,” Lapore said.
The Good Samaritan bill is a step in the right direction, Lapore said, but it doesn’t go far enough — “That’s great, but I’m still not calling.”
Correction: Roughly one third of participants in the Massachusetts Opioid Overdose Prevention Program are non- drug users. We originally reported that one third of participants were drug users.
