Updated: Dempsey Helps Broker Opioid Bill Now Being Signed

Haverhill Rep. Brian S. Dempsey, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker this morning signed an opioid addiction prevention bill, brokered last week by Haverhill Rep. Brian S. Dempsey and other legislative leaders of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means.

The substance abuse bill requires prescribers to check the prescription monitoring program each time they prescribe a narcotic, sets a one-week limit on first-time opioid prescriptions and gives patients the ability to limit the number of pills they receive. The bill also includes provisions aimed at informing young people, parents, and patients about the risks of opioid use and misuse, which will help prevent tragedies in the future.”

“The House of Representatives has prioritized a comprehensive response to the alarming rise in substance abuse incidents,” Dempsey said in a statement released to WHAV. “Over the past several years the House has increased funding for substance abuse services by 65 percent. This bill, along with increased funding and last year’s landmark substance abuse legislation, will go a long way in helping individuals struggling with addiction across the state.”

“I am proud to sign this legislation marking a remarkable statewide effort to strengthen prescribing laws and increase education for students and doctors,” Baker said in a statement Monday.  “While there is still much work to be done, our administration is thankful for the legislature’s effort to pass this bill and looks forward to working with the Attorney General and our mayors to bend the trend and support those who have fallen victim to this horrific public health epidemic.”

A compromise between House and Senate versions emerged last Wednesday from a conference committee including Ways and Means co-chairs Dempsey and Sen. Karen Spilka (D-Ashland). It received unanimous votes from both legislative branches Wednesday and Thursday. The conference committee report, according to Dempsey, includes “significant new policies that will help to fight the opioid epidemic impacting all corners of the Commonwealth.”

“The report focuses on intervention, education and prevention and incorporates the best ideas from both the House and Senate versions of the bills. The House of Representatives firmly believes that provisions within this report will have a major impact towards reversing the opioid epidemic in the Commonwealth and wil provide several new tools to help break the cycle of opioid abuse,” Dempsey added.

Other leaders, including House Speaker Robert DeLeo, Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, Attorney General Maura Healey and Auditor Suzanne Bump, also attended this morning’s ceremony at the State House. Healey praised passage of the bill.

“This bill will not only change how we as a society treat opioid painkillers, it will provide the treatment, education and prevention we so desperately need,” Healey said Monday. “I am grateful for the hard work of the Conference Committee and thank the Governor and Legislature for putting a significant solution in place that will save lives and prevent our future generations from seeing the devastating consequences of this epidemic.”

Among other things, as she said last week, the bill requires prescribers to check the prescription monitoring program each time they prescribe a narcotic, sets a one-week limit on first-time opioid prescriptions and gives patients the ability to limit the number of pills they receive.

The bill also includes provisions aimed at informing young people, parents, and patients about the risks of opioid use and misuse, which will help prevent tragedies in the future.

House and Senate Ways and Means bills were sent to the conference committee in January after the two versions were passed by each branch. “I am grateful for the conference committee’s hard work, and I look forward to a final bill making its way quickly to the governor’s desk,” Healey said.

The bill is the latest measure to combat an opioid addiction crisis across the Merrimack Valley and elsewhere in Massachusetts, since being declared “a public health emergency” in 2014 by former Gov. Deval Patrick. Locally, as WHAV reported in January, the City of Haverhill received this fiscal year a $20,125 grant from the Department of Public Health (DPH) to facilitate for first repsonders, the purchasing, carrying and administering of the opioid overdose reversal drug, Naloxone, also known as Narcan. Thirty other targeted communities, including Lawrence and Lowell, also shared at least $700,000 in grants to police and fire departments as part of an expanded pilot program created by Dempsey in last year’s House budget.

 

4 thoughts on “Updated: Dempsey Helps Broker Opioid Bill Now Being Signed

  1. AND…. reducing bail for drug dealers from $100,000 to $2,500. Doesn’t make much sense to encourage this type of behavior on one end and then lament the fact that it exists on the other. And still…… the fools in Massachusetts want to legalize marijuana. Makes no sense.

  2. All great generals fighting wars know the first thing that is done is to defeat the enemy is to block and shut off their supply lines. An estimated $50BILLION dollars a year in drugs is coming over the 1,500 miles of unpatroled southern border (as Dept of Homeland Security reported recently) and the fools enacting all this worthless legislation could careless. They have to give the impression that law enforcement, lawmakers and educators are doing ‘everything’ possible to defeat the enemy. Yet it grows unabated because they ignore the real problem.

    When you throw in that Lawrence city councilors, supported by a vote of approval by mayor Daniel Rivera, recently voted to declare itself a sanctuary city then you can see at the local level just how insane liberalism is in this country. The TV show 20/20 did a show last week about the drug problem in Manchester, NH and stated that most of the drugs flowing into that city arrive there via Lawrence. All the politicians in the Merrimack Valley know this….but when have you publicly seen any of them address it??? Yet here they are…in the press publicly taking credit for and promoting the charade.

  3. Apparently someone forgot to tell Brian, Charlie, and the rest of Beacon Hill that Cartels manufacture this stuff on their own as they are simply meeting the insatiable DEMAND. This is of course a year after record breaking opium production globally, so just like the invaders pouring into this country unabated, so is the heroin.

    Just another piece of useless, but “feel good” Legislation that once again treats symptoms but not causes. The patient still dies.