AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine Attorney General Janet Mills on Tuesday applauded initiatives to address Maine’s drug epidemic in the $6.7 billion two-year budget plan.
The budget funds up to six new drug enforcement agents and two new drug prosecutors out of Mills’ office to handle major drug crimes. The budget also funds two new judges and two new clerks for the court system to help handle the increased caseload.
“Opiate abuse, particularly heroin abuse, is the most pressing public safety issue in Maine right now,” Mills said in a press release issued Tuesday. “Last year, 208 people in Maine died as a result of drug overdose. The Legislature was right to attack these traffickers that are invading our state with this deadly poison.”
The more than 200 drug overdose deaths in 2014 represented an 18 percent increase over the previous year and the most ever recorded in Maine, Mills said in the release. The Maine Drug Task Force lawyers in her office saw a jump in the number of heroin cases they handled — up 272 percent between 2012 and 2014.