Category Archives: treatment

These three things could ease the opiate epidemic right now

As was reported by the Bangor Daily News, a week ago the Maine Opiate Collaborative unveiled its final report on the recommendations it was making to fight the opiate crisis in Maine.  The Maine Opiate Collaborative consists of three task forces, law enforcement, treatment, and prevention, that were convened by U.S. Attorney Thomas Delahanty after […]

Marijuana would worsen, not improve, the opiate crisis

Back in October 2015, U.S Attorney Thomas Delahanty recruited around 3 dozen professionals from around Maine to sit on the three task forces making up the Maine Opiate Collaborative.  The law enforcement, treatment, and prevention task forces were to charged with developing comprehensive, evidence-based strategies to address the worsening heroin crisis.  Along with my fellow […]

Maine passes addiction bill; what it means and what it doesn’t mean

In an inspiring display of unity, the Maine House and Senate both unanimously passed the $3.7 million addiction bill which was then quickly signed by Governor Paul Lepage. Within a couple of short hours, Maine had adopted a comprehensive, bi-partisan bill to address the increasingly dire addiction epidemic in Maine. One of the questions that remained […]

The case for universal prevention as a solution to the heroin crisis

This article was inspired, in part, by a recent presentation by the great Dr. Dennis Embry at the recent 2015 National Prevention Network Conference. As you might imagine, working in the field of substance abuse, I have been a part of a few discussions with colleagues about this heroin/opiate crisis our state faces.  In a […]

Gov. Christie has the right equation to address addiction crisis

By now, you probably have seen the now viral video of New Jersey Governor and GOP Presidential candidate Chris Christie talking about the drug abuse crisis.  If you haven’t watched it yet, I encourage you to take a few minutes to watch it now before reading the rest of this article: For me, what is […]

Advances in Overdose Prevention in Maine

Today I am turning over Smart Approaches to guest columnist (and friend and colleague) Alison Jones Webb who has a great article on Maine’s new overdose prevention law that goes into effect October 15th.   If you live in Maine and you think that you are at risk for opioid overdose or if you know […]

How a recovery-oriented approach to substance abuse means economic development for Maine

Last week I posted this article talking about how moving to a recovery-oriented approach to substance abuse can also be a form of economic development.  In particular, I posit that employers implementing hiring programs for people in recovery would be one such strategy.  Lo and behold, there are indeed companies out there starting to do […]

Preventing youth marijuana and alcohol use is a key to heroin epidemic

Tuesday, I was fortunate to have been invited by my friends at the Bangor Public Health Substance Abuse Task Force to a meeting they organized with Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli.  This followed the drug strategy round table featuring Mr. Botticelli and called together by Senator Angus King.  While the round […]

Maine’s Heroin Crisis: Solution Not as Simple as Enforcement vs. Treatment

The past week has seen some much-needed wall to wall coverage of the heroin crisis across most major Maine media outlets.  The most recent headlines have been around the recent rash of overdoses over the course of a 24 hours period in Portland.  This isn’t the first time we’ve seen that story.  There have been previous clusters of […]