Final Reading: To address overdose crisis, advocates and state lawmakers call for decriminalizing opioids

Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, speaks at a press conference in support of decriminalizing drugs on Thursday, April 6, 2023 in the Statehouse’s Cedar Creek Room. Photo by Sarah Mearhoff/VTDigger

After Kate O’Neill’s sister, Madelyn Linsenmeir, died of an infection while incarcerated on drug charges in 2018, O’Neill penned an obituary that went viral.

“It is impossible to capture a person in an obituary, and especially someone whose adult life was largely defined by drug addiction,” O’Neill wrote. “To some, Maddie was just a junkie — when they saw her addiction they stopped seeing her.”

“And what a loss for them,” she continued. “Because Maddie was hilarious, and warm, and fearless, and resilient. She could and would talk to anyone, and when you were in her company you wanted to stay.”

O’Neill’s writing helped land her a gig reporting on Vermont’s opioid crisis for Seven Days. At a Statehouse press conference Thursday — where she, advocates and state lawmakers made a push to decriminalize opioids — O’Neill said that in that reporting position, she “learned things I would give anything to have known when my sister was alive.”

“I wished for a time machine, some way to go back with this new knowledge I had about treatment and harm reduction, the war on drugs and incarceration,” O’Neill said. “Again and again, I thought to myself, if I could just go back in time, knowing what I know, maybe I could save my sister’s life.”

Ultimately, though, she concluded that her newfound understanding on its own wouldn’t have saved Madelyn. “It’s not even enough for every single Vermonter to know … if our lawmakers won’t act,” she said.

O’Neill and others at Thursday’s press conference made the case that substance use disorder is a medical condition, not a crime, and Vermont law should treat it as such. They threw their weight behind bills that they say would reduce the state’s record-high overdose rates by making treatment, medical supplies and overdose intervention more easily accessible.

But according to Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, who is a licensed social worker, even clean needle exchanges and safe injection sites aren’t enough. In S.119, Vyhovsky is calling on the state to decriminalize small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use. Under the bill, personal possession would lead not to arrest, but a $50 civil fine — waived if the person seeks treatment.

“We know from our history that prohibition doesn’t work,” Vyhovsky said Thursday. “In 1920, when the United States made alcohol illegal and began a 13-year-long failed experiment in criminalizing a substance, it did not lead to fewer people drinking. It led to people dying from methanol contaminated bootleg alcohol and gun violence in our streets as bootleggers and gangs capitalized on an illicit market. So we made a change, and we repealed that law.”

According to a recently released report from the Vermont Department of Health, a record number of people — 237 — died in the state from opioid overdoses in 2022.

“These rates of overdose deaths will not change unless we change how we are responding to them,” Vyhovsky said. “Continuing to do the same thing that we have done while expecting a different result is not only ridiculous, it is cruel.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee hasn’t held a hearing on S.119 since Vyhovsky introduced it in early March. Vyhovsky sits on the committee, as does Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, and committee chair Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington.

Asked Thursday why she thinks the legislation hasn’t come off the wall, Vyhovsky said, “I think bills like S.119 are still largely viewed as controversial bills.”

“And frankly, what we know from polling and from the data across the world is they’re not. They’re commonsense bills,” she continued. “But I think that there is a mindset that they are controversial, and that they’re somehow going to do more harm.”

— Sarah Mearhoff

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IN THE KNOW

A proxy war over criminal justice reform will move into the Senate following the Vermont House’s passage last week of the capital bill, H.493, the biennial spending legislation that pays for state construction projects.

Gov. Phil Scott’s administration, lawmakers and criminal justice reform advocates have for years debated what to do about the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, Vermont’s only women’s prison. Journalists, advocates and attorneys have documented unsanitary living conditions at the South Burlington facility, and state officials have long promised action.

The state hasn’t selected a site for a new prison, which officials have estimated would cost at least $70 million, and construction is not expected to begin within the two-year cycle of this capital bill. But a $15.5 million proposal from Scott to use the legislation to start saving money for a women’s prison and re-entry facility has reignited a long-running debate about whether to build one as soon as possible or prioritize more aggressive strategies for decarceration.

The bill that passed out of the House slightly reduced the money earmarked for a new prison to $14.5 million. Partially heeding calls from advocates, it would also require the Department of Corrections to submit a report to lawmakers in November detailing “the proposed size and scale of replacement women’s facilities.”