This commentary is by Ed Baker of Burlington, part of the Academy of Certified Social Workers. He is a person in recovery from injection drug use and an activist. He hosts and produces the Addiction Recovery Channel on CCTV VT.
That’s correct, dead, like the 217 loved Vermonters taken from us by drug-overdose-death in 2021. That’s one Vermonter every 40 hours. And this truly horrifying velocity of death will continue to increase, year by year, unless we as a state, as a people, accept responsibility.
No one who uses unregulated drugs is safe, especially those unfortunate ones often unhoused and with other complicated medical/psychiatric diagnoses. They are unheard, unseen, unloved, unwanted, unhoused, unprotected — the “un-generation.”
And, yes, they are all our children.
The fact of the matter is that some people use drugs; they always have and always will. Following up on this is the obvious fact that some people develop significant problems associated with their drug use. This is a human condition, a matter of health, and complicated by social determinants, as are many other health conditions.
Following up on this is the fact that people are remarkably resilient, and with the proper mix of support and treatment over time (not harsh judgment, stigma and punishment), they recover from the most debilitating conditions. If they stay alive.
I, and many others, have.
These people need immediate and efficacious interventions. They need advocates with voices, voices with volume.
Which brings me to the point: the silence I hear, silence of the lambs. Where are the fierce advocates, the ones with fire in their bellies?
With due respect, it seems some of the most experienced people with the most valuable real-time information are publicly silent on the debate raging around overdose prevention centers and expanded and innovative harm-reduction interventions.
One trap appears to be a sort of advocacy by “mental telepathy.” Some people seem to believe that by “thinking” thoughts supportive of opening an overdose prevention center or expanding harm-reduction that this will make a difference.
Another trap appears to be advocacy by “ventriloquism,” where the person with skin in the game speaks through another, a sort of surrogate, but publicly remains silent.
The obvious benefit to these techniques is invisibility and safety, the avoidance of conflict with powerful opponents, the ones in charge, very often in control of funding and other needed resources.
The last silencer — stigma and its thousand cuts — tends to shame or blame people who use drugs and their families and loved ones into submission, self-accusation, self-judgment. They suffer in silence.
As a result, the call for change is mortally weakened, and the status quo is enabled in its denial of lifesaving interventions to those most vulnerable to overdose death.
Without the collective voices of all who believe in the potential of harm-reduction measures, there will be more stalling, more denying, more collecting data — while people continue to die in Vermont.
We need the voices of experienced addiction/counseling/medical/recovery/harm reduction workers weighing in solidly at every point in the change process moving forward. We need the voices of people who use drugs, their families and neighbors, and those in recovery.
And yes, we need the voices of our state legislators and state government employees more than ever.
We are at the point now where an absence of involvement specifically with regard to the push to implement these types of services in Vermont is equal to enabling death.
Are you OK with what is currently going on here in Vermont? Does it sit well with you ethically, morally? Are you OK with millions of dollars flowing into Vermont from opioid settlements and other sources while overdose deaths increase with mounting velocity year after year, quadrupling since 2010?
Are you all set with our opioid abatement committee’s failure to objectively consider innovative harm-reduction interventions as a response to mounting death in our communities?
I’d guess not. If not, please contact: Mark.levine@vermont.gov.
Vermont’s response, albeit robust compared to many other states, is nonetheless limited. Has the time come to Vermont, to you, when it is morally compelling to speak out in support of expanding harm-reduction interventions, and creating an overdose prevention center in Chittenden County, the county with the highest number of overdose deaths in Vermont? A county prepared by tragedy and made ready by the advocacy of forward-leaning leaders over the past decade?
The time is now to make a difference. What is your response? Is your response silence, neutrality?
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” — Elie Wiesel.
Or is your response true to your core values, what you are about inside?
“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him that it is right.” — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Silence is not golden; it’s irresponsible.
