Vermont Business Magazine The House of Representatives today approved a package of bills to address the opioid epidemic spreading across the country. The legislation would help states and communities increase their capacity to treat patients in recovery and provide tools to prevent addiction and overdoses. Two bipartisan initiatives authored by Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) were included in S. 524, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act.
During debate on the bill Wednesday, Welch spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives about the impact opioid abuse has had on communities across Vermont. Earlier this week, he met with city, health care, and law enforcement leaders in Burlington to discuss the crisis in Vermont.
“This problem is creating heartbreak and heartache in all of our communities. Vermont has been extraordinary in its efforts to attack this problem….[but] challenges remain because we don’t have enough treatment funds,” Welch said. “It is tremendous that there has been such a bipartisan coming-together to sponsor practical steps that we can take. But, I hope we’re ready to take the next steps and actually focus on getting resources back to our communities that are doing the very challenging work at the local level.”
Read the text of his remarks below.
To assist in quickly identifying when, where, and how overdoses are occurring, Welch’s first initiative requires the U.S. Comptroller General to identify barriers to real-time reporting of data on drug overdoses to law enforcement agencies and solutions for eliminating them.
Welch’s second initiative directs an inter-agency task force created in the legislation to review, modify, and update best practices for pain management and prescribing pain medication. The task force will report information and recommendations on developing new non-opioid forms of pain relief and examining existing non-opioid alternatives that could be better utilized.
The legislation was approved by the House on by a vote of 400 to five and is expected to head to a House-Senate conference committee to reconcile differences with a similar legislation passed by the Senate on March 10, 2016.
Rep. Welch remarks on House floor on his amendment to a package of legislation that aims to address the opiate addiction epidemic
"Mr. Speaker, on January 8th, 2014, an extraordinary thing happened in Vermont. Our Governor, Peter Shumlin, giving a State of the State address, devoted its entirety to the opioid epidemic in Vermont. And I remember how stunned people were that a governor would take such a difficult topic and spend his entire address on it. And I remember the reaction of my colleagues here, who said, 'Peter, isn't that dangerous? You're talking about something that's not great for the reputation of the state.'
"What in fact was great for the reputation of our state was that our Governor and our leaders acknowledged the existence of a problem that was creating heartbreak and heartache in all of our communities. And a problem acknowledged is the first step in dealing with a problem to be solved. Since then Vermont has been extraordinary in its efforts to attack this problem. Communities like Rutland, like St. Albans, like Barre, and Burlington have coordinated with police force, with our medical providers, our hospitals, to provide a treatment-based approach to helping folks who have an addiction to opioids—many of them coming by it as a result of prescriptions for legitimate medical needs.
"We had in Rutland a community coming together to create Project VISION, which has faith-based groups, the police, the medical community, doing everything it can to basically give individual attention to folks that are trying to help themselves get off of opiates. The problem continues to be severe but what we have is a community that’s fully engaged in it, including our state legislature, which provided funds for a treatment based-approach with a hub and spoke system that’s really working well. Folks who have a problem with addiction are getting access to methadone take that in a hub so it's supervised, and they're able to go to work. As a result of the Governor’s focus, we’ve had community engagement to stem the tide of this issue. It’s been working, but challenges remain because we don’t have enough treatment funds.
"This legislation is an important acknowledgement on the part of Congress that we’re getting it: across this country we’re all being affected by the challenges our communities face. I thank the sponsors of this legislation, Mr. Pallone and Mr. Upton for their leadership. My hope is that we get the message in Congress that we’ve got to send some funds back to these communities that are struggling with these programs. We can't micromanage treatment here—that’s up to the courageous people in our communities to do that. But some of the tax money they’ve sent to us, we’ve got to send back to them. It's why I, among others, am supporting an emergency appropriation of $600 million.
"The amendment I have on this bill—which establishes an interagency task force to review, modify, and update best practices for pain management—would ask that we also review developing non-opioid forms of pain relief. If opioids diminish pain but they create misery, let's find another way to do it and help our folks who need pain relief to get it. This is tremendous that there has been such a bipartisan coming-together to sponsor practical steps we can take, and I see us in Congress acknowledging what Gov. Shumlin identified as a real problem for us and that we’re hearing about in our communities. But I hope we’re ready to take the next steps and actually focus on getting resources back to our communities that are doing the very, very challenging work at the local level, where it needs to be done, to help folks relieve themselves from the addiction of opioids."