This commentary is by Ed Baker of Burlington, a member of the Academy of Certified Social Workers, host/producer of the Addiction Recovery Channel and a person with the lived experience of poly-drug addiction and injection drug use, presently in recovery for 38 years.
We are morally obligated to come to grips with reality here in Vermont, to decisively face our truth and, as a state, respond.
Since when do we allow fellow Vermonters to die without rushing to their aid with all we’ve got?
I’m talking about poly-drug overdose death, the toll it’s taking.
You’ll note a consistent reluctance on the part of official spokespersons to comment on “trends,” always waiting for more data.
Well, here’s a trend: It’s getting worse, quickly, with overdose deaths likely near quintupling between 2010 and 2022.
And, considering the absence of innovative harm-reduction programming, namely overdose prevention centers, it’s very difficult to place any stock at all in the current public health planning to ameliorate this disaster.
Fentanyl is involved in over 93% of the deaths here in Vermont; there’s an alarming increase in overdoses involving cocaine and methamphetamine; and xylazine, a horse tranquilizer that complicates the clinical course of overdose and causes severe soft tissue infections, is more and more commonly being detected in the unregulated drug supply.
The most recent data, released by the Vermont Department of Health in February, states that as of November 2022, there were 212 confirmed overdose deaths, with another 22 deaths waiting to be confirmed. In the first 11 months of 2022, there were potentially 234 deaths due to drug overdose, with December’s tragic additions not even figured in yet. This is compared to 217 lost Vermonters in 2021, at that point the worst year on record.
All the above information is borne out by reliable data available to us now, yet we persist in a bureaucratic “whistling by the graveyard” as though somehow “more of the same” will somehow suddenly make a difference in this clear and disastrous trend.
Politically driven arguments to nullify reliable data and allocate expenditures to more traditional programming are ill-founded, in my humble opinion.
Arguments reflecting the supposed rationality of stockpiling funds readily available to take the bite out of future “tough times” are as near to “let them eat cake” as I’ve heard in my lifetime.
Ask the 217 loved ones taken by overdose death in 2021, or the likely 240-plus taken from us in 2022 about future tough times.
We are back on our heels, for sure. We need to admit our responses are limited and therefore inadequate, and we need to follow the available science in this field. We need to be all-in to save lives now.
At the Vermont House Committee on Human Services hearing on Overdose Prevention Centers on Feb. 24, testimony was presented that graphically depicted the tough times we are in right now, and what science and experience are teaching us.
Myself and Sarah Russell, special assistant to end homelessness for the city of Burlington and co-chair for the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance, describe our tragic times, myself reviewing the latest data available in Vermont, and Sarah from her firsthand experience reversing two potentially fatal overdoses at the Warming Shelter in Burlington in early February.
Our testimonies were followed by the expert testimony of Kailin See, senior project director at OnPointNYC, the first sanctioned overdose prevention center in the USA; and Dr. Brandon Marshall, professor of epidemiology at Brown University in Rhode Island and an expert on overdose prevention and overdose prevention centers (please see above link for these testimonies).
At OnPointNYC, since its opening on Nov. 30, 2021, more than 2,300 participants have been served, utilizing the centers some 55,000 times, with over 700 overdose reversals. The estimated savings in costs to New York City related to law enforcement, hospital and emergency responses and sanitation services are more than $15 million to date.
Dr. Brandon Marshall eloquently summarizes the wealth of research data available on overdose prevention centers worldwide, with emphasis on their scalability to a state like Vermont.
More than 100 evidence-based, peer-reviewed studies have consistently proven the positive impacts of overdose prevention centers, including:
- Increasing entry into substance use disorder treatment, and the delivery of medical and social services.
- Preventing overdose deaths (there has not been a single overdose fatality at any overdose prevention center worldwide), and safely managing on-site overdoses.
- Providing a safe place for people who use drugs to find connection and care without stigma or fear of criminalization.
- Reducing the amount and frequency that clients use drugs.
- Reducing public drug use and syringe and/or other drug paraphernalia litter.
- Reducing HIV and hepatitis C risk behavior (such as syringe sharing or unsafe sex).
- Saving costs due to a reduction in disease, overdose deaths, and need for emergency medical services.
To date there has been an absence of systematic review of this data at the Opioid Settlement Abatement Advisory Committee. This committee now has access to $10 million designated to reducing accidental polydrug overdose death.
Please recommend due diligence be practiced regarding the potential of overdose prevention centers by emailing the state health commissioner, mark.levine@vermont.gov, today.
