AUGUSTA, Maine — Lawmakers at the State House have passed the first of several expected bills aimed at addressing the state’s drug crisis.
The $3.7 million bill had run into some opposition from Gov. Paul LePage, but after some revisions were made, he signed it into law within minutes of it reaching his desk.
For a while last week, it looked like the bipartisan drug bill would be derailed because of concerns over its funding. At issue was a provision to use one-time money from the settlement of a lawsuit against the bond rating firm Standard and Poor’s, assigning the attorney general’s office to distribute grants to law enforcement for drug programs.
House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, a Republican from Newport, says that strategy was changed following discussions with LePage and key Democrats.
“Sen. Alfond and I had an opportunity to meet with the governor, obviously I had been meeting with the governor and his staff over time and there were some concerns that we had had with the bill, and I think a lot of those concerns were reflected in the House Republican minority report which was essentially the bill that was passed,” Fredette says. “I think what is important here is that we were able to bring everybody together.”
The new agreement uses money from the Medical Use of Marijuana Fund, which is made up of licensing fees paid by medical marijuana providers. It also assigns the Department of Public Safety to administer grants to local police and the county jails.
Alfond says he believes it shows that the two parties and the governor can work out their differences to address important problems.
“It did get down to a couple of issues in the bill and also some of the funding issues that we resolved,” Alfond says. “Mainers expect us to get it done, they don’t care about the minutiae. They just want us to take a positive step forward and that is what we did with this bill.”
Paul McCarrier, president of the Maine industry group representing medical marijuana businesses in the state, praised the deal and said the marijuana fund has a surplus that can be tapped without affecting the oversight of the businesses.
“How the medical marijuana program has gone over the past five years, I see this going on easily for at least the next five years,” he says. “But hopefully we won’t need as much money because we will be able to win this war against heroin and opioids.”
While McCarrier is confident the marijuana fund can be an ongoing source for some grants, lawmaker after lawmaker said this is only the first bill of several needed to address the drug crisis.
“Make no mistake about it, we have more to do,” says Rep. Drew Gattine, a Democrat from Westbrook who co-chairs the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee. “And I hope and believe that we will do more this session, but the measures that are before us today are a giant and important first step.”
When the debate reached the Senate, the panel’s other co-chair, Sen. Eric Brakey, a Republican from Auburn, sounded a similar caution.
“Drug addiction has been with us throughout human history and it is not disappearing anytime soon,” he says. “It is a multilayered and complex problem and as much as we in the government would like to imagine that government can fix this problem, at best we can play a role in reducing harm.”
There are at least half a dozen bills already before lawmakers, in addition to this new law, that funds ten more drug agents, funds a ten-bed treatment facility in the Bangor area and sets up some grant programs to address drug treatment and diversion.
