The Mills administration is planning to launch a statewide “rapid response team” later this year to help combat the opioid crisis.
The team would use near real-time data to look for spikes in nonfatal drug overdoses, and offer help to people with substance use disorder who may not otherwise have sought or received assistance.
The initiative, expected to cost about $3 million, comes on the heels of a drug overdose report that showed 127 Maine people had died from overdoses in the first quarter of 2020, a 23 percent increase over the last quarter of 2019. Maine is on track to surpass the record number of 417 overdose deaths in 2017, with a projected 259 deaths for the first six months of 2020 and possibly about 500 for the year.
Gov. Janet Mills highlighted the rapid response team in her speech before the state’s Opioid Response Summit on Thursday, which was held virtually and included former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.