This commentary is by state Reps. Taylor Small, P-Winooski, and Selene Colburn, P-Burlington.
The 210 Vermonters who died from opioid overdose deaths in 2021 set a record for our state.
The continued overdose crisis, Covid-19, and an influx of federal funding have created opportunities for the expansion of high-quality culturally relevant harm-reduction services — but the Scott administration is letting this moment pass us by without action.
This year, the Vermont Legislature made significant investments in evidence-based approaches designed to save lives, such as syringe service programs and pilot programs, including a mobile methadone clinic, increased support services for justice-involved Vermonters, and expanded treatment education for emergency responders.
We reinvested prevention funding to focus on the prevention of death, because when your house is on fire, you don’t conserve water for the future; you put the fire out. You save people’s lives now.
A significant barrier to these much-needed investments seemed to be the Vermont Department of Health. We listened to our providers in the field about what action we needed to take on the legislative level and the solutions were clear: reduce barriers to medication-assisted treatment and establish an overdose prevention site.
After working with the Department of Health and coming to what appeared to be agreement in the House, department representatives then revoked their support in the Senate. They asked for funding to go back to the prevention of substance use, in turn reducing necessary funding to our syringe service programs.
They criticized the pilot programs presented by the House, calling them duplicative, and said they would have “very little impact on the overdose rates” in Vermont. They opposed the expansion of syringe service programs and the reduction of prior-authorization insurance requirements that providers told us were preventing effective access to treatment.
When asked what the state could be doing better to address the growing overdose death crisis, the department’s answer was that we’re already doing enough. If this is all we can do as a state, then we have a grim future ahead of us.
The Legislature ultimately passed H.728, a bill that would have expanded the scope of syringe service programs, studied the possibility of an overdose prevention site in Vermont, and examined barriers to treatment access in Medicaid insurance practices. Gov. Scott vetoed this bill, saying that he objected to the Legislature even studying an overdose prevention site.
These sites, operating around the world and now in New York City, have saved countless lives and provide a safe place for people who use drugs to get support, help, and lifesaving access to overdose reversals. In contrast, many of the Vermonters who have died of an overdose were alone and isolated at the time.
The Legislature also passed H.505, a bill that pulled together a panel of medical experts to advise us on how to approach personal use and possession of drugs through a public health lens. Gov. Scott vetoed it, instead choosing to uphold failed “war on drugs” rhetoric that promotes stigma and keeps Vermonters from seeking help.
Similarly, the governor vetoed H.534, a bill that would have given second chances to Vermonters with nonviolent records relating to drug crimes or related property crimes, long after they had served their time.
Put this all together and it paints a clear and deeply troubling picture of the Vermont Department of Health and the Scott administration’s approach to this crisis: one that lacks curiosity, fails to follow the science, relies heavily on the clearly failed strategy of criminalization, and tells us again and again that everything is fine, while our friends, loved ones, and fellow Vermonters pay the cost with their lives.
The situation we are in now is more dire than ever. Coming out of a time of isolation and plummeting mental health while continuing to deal with the changing reality of Covid, many individuals are increasing their substance use, putting them at a heightened risk of overdose.
As the leading cause of death due to injury in the United States, drug overdose not only hurts the individual; it also hurts their families and our community as a whole. Federal and state funding for treatment, rather than punishment, for our fellow Vermonters is needed to repair and rejuvenate our communities across the state and nation.
These past two years have been painful in so many ways but have opened the eyes of many to the longstanding inequities and injustices within our systems. Patient-centered and culturally effective harm-reduction organizations must be financially sustainable and fully funded within our system of care to ultimately lead our state toward improved outcomes for people who use drugs and help them not only survive, but thrive. And we must embrace strategies that we know reduce harm and save lives.
Let us say it again: Everything is not fine. We need the Scott administration to take the overdose fatality crisis seriously and act with informed compassion now.
