The Gloucester, Massachusetts, Police Department is taking an innovative approach to heroin addiction — assistance, not incarceration, and support, not judgment. After years of failing to stem a drug epidemic similar to Maine’s, Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello realized that, while law enforcement must continue to focus on the supply side of the problem, it must spend much more time on the demand side.
This approach should be discussed at a drug summit Gov. Paul LePage has said he will hold Aug. 26. While full details have not been released (and the public and media will not be able to attend the event), the governor’s description of the summit indicates it will lean heavily toward law enforcement, not treatment. This is a missed opportunity.
Campanello, who worked for seven years as a narcotics detective, has a heartfelt critique of being reliant on the law enforcement approach. “I have arrested or charged many addicts and dealers,” he wrote in the Facebook post. “I’ve never arrested a tobacco addict, nor have I ever seen one turned down for help when they develop lung cancer, whether or not they have insurance. The reasons for the difference in care between a tobacco addict and an opiate addict is stigma and money. Petty reasons to lose a life.”
This is how Campanello described what has become known as Project Angel on the department’s Facebook page in May: “Any addict who walks into the police station with the remainder of their drug equipment (needles, etc.) or drugs and asks for help will NOT be charged. Instead we will walk them through the system toward detox and recovery. We will assign them an ‘angel’ who will be their guide through the process. Not in hours or days, but on the spot.”
The department is working with local addiction treatment clinics to ensure that those who want help can quickly get it. The department also is working with local pharmacies to offer Narcan, an anti-overdose drug, that is available in Massachusetts without a prescription, at little or no cost. The police department will pay for the drug with money seized from drug dealers.
The Andover, Massachusetts, Police Department joined Project Angel, which has since been joined by two police departments in Illinois. The work is now supported by the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, a nonprofit group of private citizens, business leaders, law enforcement officials and others formed to help spread the Gloucester model. The Maine Alliance for Addiction Recovery is working with the Augusta Police Department, the Kennebec County district attorney, local counseling agencies and Maine General Hospital to set up a recovery supported team modeled on Project Angel.
In the first three months of this year, an average of two people died each day in Massachusetts due to a heroin overdose, according to the Massachusetts State Police. This startling number does not include the state’s three biggest cities — Boston, Springfield and Worcester, which keep their own statistics. Three suspected fatal overdoses were reported in Gloucester.
Last year, Massachusetts had a record number of opioid-related deaths — more than 1,000. This is almost triple the number of opioid-related deaths in 2000.
Similar trends are seen in Maine, with each year setting a new record for drug-related deaths. In 2014, 208 people died from drug overdoses, according to data from the state attorney general’s office. Among the deaths in 2014, 57 were caused by heroin or morphine, spiking from 34 in 2013, when there were 176 deaths attributable to drug use.
In the budget for the next two years, lawmakers approved more drug enforcement agents and additional prosecutors and judges, but not as many as LePage had proposed.
Extending helping hands to addicts must be part of the discussion as well.