EDGARTOWN, Massachusetts — The White House announced a new strategy on Monday to tackle the explosion in heroin use in Maine and a collection of eastern states, focusing on treating addicts rather than punishing them, and targeting high-level suppliers for arrest.
The move is a response to a sharp rise in the use of heroin and opiate-based painkillers, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has described as an epidemic. The new initiative, which treats addicts as patients and dealers as criminals, creates two regional coordinators in each of five regional areas, including New England.
One of the coordinators will focus on public health, including sending real-time updates to medical professionals to ensure they have the resources they need to fight addiction and overdoses. The other coordinator will distribute law enforcement intelligence from across the region to assist in disrupting the heroin supply.
Some funding also will be targeted to rural areas such as Maine to help educate both responders and the public. In addition, there will be two New England conferences per year that bring together public health and public safety officials.
Heroin use has more than doubled among people age 18-25 in the United States in the past decade, according to CDC figures, while overdose death rates have nearly quadrupled. An estimated 45 percent of U.S. heroin users are also addicted to prescription painkillers.
Announcing the Heroin Response Strategy on Monday, Michael Botticelli, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the new plan will address the heroin and painkiller epidemics as both “a public health and a public safety issue.”
Under the plan, $2.5 million of $13.4 million in new funding to combat drug trafficking will target regions the White House said are facing a severe heroin threat: Appalachia, New England, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
The Obama administration will work with local law enforcement to increase access to treatment for addicts and try to trace the sources of heroin trafficking.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said in a written statement Monday that solutions to the problem will cross both state lines and traditional boundaries between public safety and public health groups.
“It’s clear that our response must also transcend these boundaries,” said Pingree. “I commend the White House for seeing that a new approach is needed to confront the crisis quickly and effectively, with close coordination across multiple states and between law enforcement officers and public health officials.”
Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island have pushed for such policies for more than a year in Congress.