Md. drug addiction legislation set to move forward
Tackling Maryland’s Heroin addiction crisis head on started in earnest last February when Governor Larry Hogan and Lieutenant Governor Boyd Rutherford established the “Heroin and Opioid Emergency Task Force”.
Back in June at the Lower Shore Heroin Summit in Salisbury, Rutherford told 47 ABC, “this challenge associated with heroin and prescription opioids is throughout the state, and that includes the communities here on the lower shore.”
Over several months the group met across the state with law enforcement and health officials.
Input and recommendations became final last December, and now, actual legislation is taking shape. Eastern Shore Delegate Sheree Sample-Hughes tells 47 ABC that over the past few weeks lawmakers have been working on a number of bills which Governor Hogan proposed. Like one that would modify and strengthen how the state monitors the use of prescription drugs.
“sometimes this is where the drug use begins and so if we can address this issue of the abusing of opioids, we can also then go forward and tackle other problems or have the issue resolved at the onset versus after the fact.”
The bill would make it mandatory for anyone prescribing medicine in the state to register with the program by July 2017. Currently it’s only optional.
Violators would face a spectrum of penalties including fines and jail time. Versions of the bill have been heard in committees in both houses and though they haven’t been voted on.
Sample-Hughes says she expects it to move quickly. She says another new bill, the Justice Reinvestment Act, would improve and expand treatment options for addicts using money reallocated from the prison system.
“the state would be able to save over the course of time $247-million. Where that number comes from is the fact that we would reduce the number of persons that are incarcerated for minimal crimes and so those individuals will move out of the system,” Sample-Hughes said.
We’re told these measures are likely to get bipartisan support. Inevitably, comes down to dollars and cents says Delegate Carl Anderton Jr. who supports both bills.
“Funding these priorities when they come out, that’s paramount. We can pass any piece of legislation we want, if it can’t be paid for and enacted, then it’s not going to be successful,” Said Anderton.
Even so, Anderton says he doesn’t foresee any major issues when it comes to funding these measures. Whatever happens, he stresses that overcoming the addiction crisis is not a one shot deal.
“this is an ongoing thing, this isn’t something that we’re going to fix in one session or in one year and be done with it. Just last month had 15 reported overdoses in Wicomico County,” Said Anderton, “everything we do is just kind of taking a brick out of the wall as we slowly tear it down,”
In January, Governor Hogan also proposed legislation that would modify the state’s Gang Statute. His changes would assist in prosecuting drug traffickers a part of a criminal organization and allow for civil penalties.
