This commentary is by Joseph Magee, a Burlington city councilor, and Ed Baker, an activist, a person in recovery from severe drug use disorder and injection drug use, and host/producer of the Addiction Recovery Channel.
Everyone we speak with recognizes that we are in the middle of a raging public health emergency. On Aug. 31, a large group of Vermonters gathered in Burlington’s City Hall Park to acknowledge this and do something about it.
It was International Overdose Awareness Day and concerned Vermonters from all over Vermont made it their business to be there to show their solidarity with the beautiful parents of Team Sharing Vermont, an ever-expanding group of parents who have lost their loving children to accidental drug overdose.
Young Dylan Reich, our drummer, struck his drum 264 times during our moment of silence, one strike for each loved Vermonter lost in 2022. With each deep, resounding strike of his drum, every heart on that lawn broke just a little more, until at the end we were one broken heart. We were permanently bonded in grief, heart-to-heart and as a result no longer left to cope with this unspeakable tragedy alone.
The beautiful portraits of the Team Sharing children lined the perimeter of the park.
Smiling faces, full of life and beauty, each one a moment captured for all time, a priceless memory, something to hold on to. One daughter smiling broadly at a Burlington Recovery Walk, a sign behind her with letters as big as her smile: “Recovery Rocks!” She was 37 when accidental drug overdose took her from us. Recovery does rock if you can stay alive in this crazy world, and somehow survive the War on Drugs.
One parent told us she felt that the Team Sharing Parents’ children’s deaths were nullified, negated and devalued because of the stigma attached to the manner of their death. She looked into our eyes and said she loves this event because she gets to spend time with her child’s portrait.
Another parent hugged us tight and, when we sat together on a bench for a few moments, he cried and told us he never knows when he’s going to cry. It could be anything, something that reminds him of when his daughter was still with him. And, yes, many of us wept too, at Dylan’s 264 drum strikes and the way they landed in our chests, and in our hearts.
Our speakers revealed their life experiences with trust, intimacy, a beautiful vulnerability, and deep commitment to contributing to real, immediate change in the ways our communities respond to the many people at risk for overdose death today. We can easily — and we must — do more.
Local data from Burlington shows that through August 2023, emergency responders had received more overdose-related calls than they did through all of 2022. And statewide data through June of this year reports that there have been 115 confirmed overdose fatalities, and 19 more likely but unconfirmed deaths due to accidental drug overdose. If this trend continues, we are likely to see a record number of overdose fatalities in Vermont for the fourth year in a row.
We cannot address this crisis by simply arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating those who are suffering. As a country, we pour billions of dollars annually into the criminal legal system in the name of the “War on Drugs.” We’ve tried this approach for decades, which has resulted in the largest per capita prison population in the world and a steady upward trend of overdose fatalities. Clearly, this approach is failing our community.
The promising news is this: There is a better, more compassionate way for us to respond.
The drug-overdose crisis is a public health crisis which requires evidence-based harm reduction and health tools to support people who use drugs. For those unfamiliar with harm reduction, here is a definition from the Drug Policy Alliance: “Harm reduction is a set of ideas and interventions that seek to reduce the harms associated with both drug use and punitive drug policies.”
Harm reduction tools that are practiced in Vermont include syringe exchange programs, drug testing strips, Narcan, and soon, drug checking.
One glaring omission from this list of interventions is overdose prevention centers, which offer a safe environment for people to use drugs with the support of staff trained to intervene if someone experiences an overdose. Beyond this important lifesaving intervention, overdose prevention centers can also offer a stigma-free space where those struggling with substance use disorder can be engaged in a supportive way and connected to drug treatment, housing, job training and more.
Overdose prevention centers have the added benefits of removing significant burden from our first responders, keeping drug use out of public spaces, and reducing hazardous waste in the community.
Burlington has taken significant steps within our authority to support harm reduction to date, and the City Council has previously passed several resolutions calling for an overdose prevention center in Burlington. Two important steps need to happen for us to realize overdose prevention centers in Vermont. First, we need the state Legislature to act on H.72, a bill that would authorize OPCs in Vermont. Second, we need leaders in Montpelier to allocate money to this effort using the opioid settlement funds we have received.
Of the $23 million that has come to the state, only $8.3 million has been allocated. We must act with urgency and intention to get this money to the places where it can do the most good.
If you are interested in learning more about the items we mentioned above or joining advocacy efforts to help get these urgently needed harm reduction tools into our community, please email jmagee@burlingtonvt.gov.
