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.
The sins of omission currently dominating our present endeavor to prioritize, focus and allocate opioid settlement funds are certain to result in a “death sentence” for those most at risk for accidental drug overdose death in Vermont.
Right here in our home state, there were 217 drug overdose deaths, one every 40 hours, in 2021, the worst year on record. Fifth-one of these tragic losses, one per week, occurred in Chittenden County, primarily Burlington.
This trend will most certainly continue without innovative programming.
Is anybody responsible for this? Is anyone accountable?
You’d think our Opioid Settlement Abatement Advisory Committee would have hit the ground running, analyzing available data here to identify the most-at-risk-for-death populations, then commencing to consult with noted experts to design the most immediate and efficacious interventions available to reach these near-death populations.
You’d think this would be colored with immediacy and urgency, sleeves rolled up, working overtime to see to it the funds were appropriated for the innovations deemed most valuable.
Not so, not by a long shot.
Instead, four meetings have been held since Aug. 4, 2022, a total of five hours — five hours in six months, while Vermonters are dying one every 40 hours. That’s approximately 108 loved Vermonters taken by accidental drug overdose since the committee convened.
And the agenda has focused primarily upon programming that was in place in 2021, the worst year on record, with 217 Vermonters taken from us. To date, no innovative approaches have been discussed.
In the first meeting on Auig. 4, 2022, Rep. Dane Whitman asked: “How do we request a witness?” The response was: “You would propose it to the group and if the committee agrees, the department will arrange the witness.”
Two committee members submitted requests to the committee chair in December, asking for Dr. Brandon Marshall, an epidemiologist from Brown University in Rhode Island, to testify on harm-reduction before the committee. Their requests were ignored.
Mayor Miro Weinberger of Burlington has repeatedly expressed his concern regarding these funds not being primarily allocated to relieve the suffering and prevent the immediate death of people most at risk for accidental drug overdose.
Instead of encouraging a committee discussion of these points, the committee chair changed the focus and none of the mayor’s concerns were addressed.
These funds are being awarded to Vermont as a direct result of this same population’s dying of drug overdose over the past two decades at a continuously accelerated rate, Vermont being the state with the highest increase in overdose death rate in 2020, quadrupling since 2010.
Why are we not laser-focused on spending opioid settlement dollars on those about to die?
This is their money, and we are turning our backs on them.
We are, by agenda, being set up to spend these funds on politically popular programming, the path of least resistance, winding through the comfortable countryside of the status-quo, while those about to die – die.
These Vermonters are the unseen, unheard, unwanted, unprotected and, most tragically, the unloved. There is no love for them.
Help without love is not help; justice without love is not justice. Real compassion is not words; it’s deeds. It lives in our actions, our decisions, our expenditures.
While stigma hides behind the opaque veil of politically correct language and reigns still, it betrays itself in the way we withhold available resources to the powerless, the most at risk for death.
It’s evident in the omissions. Inactions speak louder than words.
Innovative harm-reduction interventions are intentionally being blocked from discussion, and this act of omission speaks volumes.
Opioid abatement funds should primarily be focused upon innovative harm-reduction interventions because these types of interventions are open to working with people who use drugs, while they are using. For many, abstinence from drugs is simply not possible. These are the people continuously exposed to an unregulated drug supply contaminated with lethal poisons, fentanyl and xylazine. They are the people, the Vermonters, most likely to die from accidental drug overdose in 2023.
The question looms: Are we going to guarantee continued record-setting accidental drug overdose deaths in Vermont, or invest in effective harm-reduction programs that save the lives of those most at risk? Programs designed to reach those about to die.
Time has almost run out in Vermont.
The Opioid Settlement Abatement Committee is holding its fifth meeting and will be discussing settlement funding allocation recommendations on Feb.13.
Your voice is indispensable. Please speak out clearly in support of harm-reduction allocations by emailing Dr. Mark Levine, committee chair, at mark.levine@vermont.gov .
