More than a decade into the nation’s opioid crisis, Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and other members of the Senate Health Committee are pressing for solutions to the escalating number of overdose deaths.
At a hearing of the Senate Health Committee on Thursday, Collins referenced a newspaper article about the Maine Municipal Association’s annual convention, where first responders in Portland and Falmouth discussed their concern about the deepening drug epidemic in Maine.
She told fellow committee members that Maine overdose death rate jumped 38 percent in 2016 and now exceeds deaths from car accidents, suicides or breast cancer. She pointed out that Congress has already increased funding to address the crisis and asked what more the federal government can do.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said he believed his agency could make a difference by taking steps to decrease exposure to opioids through more training for prescribers of drugs.
“We are also looking at what we can do with respect to mandatory education, but I think the key for us is going to be to try and reduce overall exposure,” he said.
“I think you are absolutely right that we have to put more effort at the front end of this problem and reduce access,” Collins said.
Collins has long advocated for more resources for addiction treatment. But she said she also wants to see more attention paid to prevention, as well as increased law enforcement efforts to stop the flow of drugs.
In the meantime, Dr. Debra Houry of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Maine and other states are working to track places where overdoses are occurring in clusters.
“Where you look at EMS, emergency department data to look at new trends, this is how Maine and many other states here on this panel can detect new community outbreaks,” she said.
By tracking this information, Houry said resources can be better allocated where they are needed.
But resources, said Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, must also include access to medications like methadone and Suboxone.
“We still do not have adequate access to treatment, to evidence-based treatment for people who need it. And so as long as that situation occurs we are going to continue to have the terrible kinds of tragedies that are the opioid epidemic,” she said.
The committee is considering several bills to address the crisis, and Collins also sits on the Appropriations Committee that is working on the federal budget, where any funds for addressing the crisis will have to be approved.
