During the tenure of every governor, there are numerous crises. Some are created by natural disasters when we all need to pull together to provide immediate relief from pain and heartbreak. After Tropical Storm Irene, Vermonters needed to feel relief quickly in order to know that a return from disaster to normal life was, in fact, possible. Hope is born in such efforts.
Other crises that confront us are actually much tougher, because they are more complicated, controversial, and difficult to talk about.
Vermont is confronted by one of these right now: the rising tide of drug addiction and drug-related crime spreading across the state.
In every corner of our state, heroin and opiate drug addiction threatens us. It threatens the safety that has always blessed our state. It is a crisis bubbling just beneath the surface which might be invisible to many but is already highly visible to law enforcement, medical personnel, social-service and addiction-treatment providers, and too many Vermont families.
It requires all of us to take action before the quality of life that we cherish so much is compromised.
The facts speak for themselves.
• In Vermont, since 2000, we have seen a more than 770-percent increase in treatment for all opiates.
• What started as an Oxycontin- and prescription-drug-addiction problem in Vermont has now grown into a full-blown heroin crisis.
• We have seen an over 250-percent increase in people receiving heroin treatment here in Vermont since 2000, with the greatest percentage increase, nearly 40 percent, in just the past year.
• In 2013, there were twice as many federal indictments against heroin dealers than in the prior two years, and more than five times as many as had been obtained in 2010.
• Last year, we had nearly double the number of deaths in Vermont from heroin overdose as the prior year.
* * *
We often hear in the news about the criminal side of drug addiction, about the robberies or the busts in our communities. Our police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges do an extraordinary job under tough circumstances.
But we must bolster our current approach to addiction with more common sense. We must address it as a public health crisis, providing treatment and support, rather than simply doling out punishment, claiming victory, and moving on to our next conviction.
I am not naive, and I know you aren't either. Terrible crimes - murders, armed robbery, sex trafficking, and others - are committed by those in the drug trade and by those who are supporting their drug habits. These crimes have victims and devastating consequences.
But addiction is, at its core, a chronic disease. We must first, aim for prevention, and then eradicate it with aggressive treatment.
Getting this right is not just a matter of compassion. It is also the right thing to do for our pocketbooks:
• Every week, our Drug Task Force estimates, more than $2 million of heroin and other opiates are being trafficked into Vermont.
• Due to our proximity to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities where heroin is cheap, dealers can make a lot of money from addicts in Vermont. A $6 bag of heroin in New York City can go for up to $30 here. So think about that: a $6 purchase could sell for five times as much, just a few hours up the interstate.
• That means that a heroin habit in Vermont can cost an addict tens of thousands of dollars per person per year, and that's before they put a roof over their heads, food on the table, or sneakers on the kids.
Nearly 80 percent of our prison population are either addicted or there because of their addiction. A week in prison costs about $1,120, but $123 will buy a week of treatment for a heroin addict at a state-funded center. Today, our state government spends more to imprison Vermonters than we do to support our colleges and universities, and our prison spending has doubled in the last nine years.
We have made some headway on the drug problem:
• We have opened treatment centers in nearly every region of our state, considered to be national models.
• Thanks to your good work last year, we have expanded our efforts to combat Oxycontin and prescription drug abuse and to offer safe harbor to those reporting overdoses.
• We have lessened the penalties for small amounts of marijuana, acknowledging that we can better use our limited resources.
• Through a partnership between the Vermont State Police, the state drug task force, our state's attorneys, local police, the federal government, and our Attorney General Bill Sorrell, we are getting tougher, using drug busts to disrupt dealer networks that kill our neighbors and kids.
This important work must continue. Yet despite all of these efforts, we are losing too many Vermonters to drug addiction, and the crime that comes with it.
We can't afford our current path. We have to figure out how to spend taxpayer money more wisely, while we treat the disease more effectively.
* * *
I propose action in four areas to help us gain ground in this battle.
First, let's start treating drug addiction as the immediate health crisis that it is by dramatically increasing treatment across Vermont. Right now, we have more than 500 addicts who are ready to accept help but who are condemned to waiting.
I ask the Legislature to approve an additional $200,000 in the Budget Adjustment to help slash those waiting lists. The money will allow treatment centers to immediately staff up and bring in additional resources to begin eliminating the backlog, while preparing to serve a growing number of patients.
I am also proposing increased resources for our statewide recovery centers and additional funding for substance abuse and mental health treatment services for Reach Up (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) recipients. This funding will represent more than $1 million of additional support for treatment and recovery, on top of the more than $8 million in ongoing funding in my budget proposal.
Another regional treatment center has just opened with expanded services to help the Northeast Kingdom meet its increased demand.
I know that we have more work to do to provide the right treatment and support to those who are addicted, not just using maintenance drugs as a Band-Aid for this complicated disease.
I also know that treatment facilities have not always been embraced by our local communities. But the time has come for us to stop quietly averting our eyes from the growing heroin addiction in our front yards while we fear and fight treatment facilities in our back yards.
This is tough stuff. But this is about getting help to those who are desperately sick, and giving hope to those who wish to get better. Help and hope are what we Vermonters do best.
* * *
Second, let's do a better job of convincing drug users who wind up in our criminal-justice system that getting help is a better path than addiction.
Drug addicts are the best deniers and the best liars you will ever meet. Some will do just about anything to continue using. But all the research tells us that an addict is most accepting of treatment when the blue lights are flashing and cold reality sets in.
Our current judicial system is not well-equipped to seize this moment. It can take weeks or months from arrest to conviction, leaving an addict time to settle back into old habits.
I want to give our prosecutors and judges the resources needed to strike immediately. My 2015 budget will include an additional $760,000 to provide objective, evidence-based assessments to help our state's attorneys and our courts determine who might qualify for immediate treatment and services, and then hire the necessary personnel to monitor their recovery.
In this new system, a third-party team chosen in conjunction with local prosecutors, defense counsel, and court personnel but contracted through the state would promptly, after arrest, conduct this assessment. Addicts accused of drug-fueled crimes could agree to seek immediate treatment for their disease and avoid criminal prosecution if they successfully adhere to the strict requirements.
For any individual not suitable for early intervention, our judges could choose to use these same assessments to set conditions of release and monitoring before trial that include immediate treatment and other services. One's success or failure in recovery would be considered during sentencing.
I am confident we can do this. Chittenden County and Addison County, among others, have been implementing prosecutor-lead intervention programs with good results. Some of our courts have used grants and pilots to experiment with ways to better address addiction in the criminal justice system. Tri-partisan legislation seeks to build upon some of these efforts.
* * *
We have to couple enhanced treatment and intervention with even-stronger, more-coordinated law enforcement.
That is why we have just launched a new mapping portal, led by my Department of Public Safety, to share and analyze data statewide to determine where our hot spots are and where our resources can be most effective in stopping the flow of drugs.
I am also reorganizing the Governor's Criminal Justice Cabinet to include substance-abuse prevention so that its membership reflects the broader challenge we face.
I also ask the Legislature to make two important changes that will help ensure that high-volume dealers who bring drugs into our state will suffer the consequences, and that those who break into our homes with weapons in hand to rob us to feed their habit will face enhanced criminal penalties.
* * *
Finally, we know that the best way to fix this problem is to prevent addiction in the first place. This is the toughest challenge we face - the one without a clear national model or consensus.
We need Vermont ingenuity; we need all of us thinking big together. Later this year, I will be facilitating a statewide community forum to help us share creative ideas about prevention.
I am also providing a grant from my office to enable filmmaker Bess O'Brien and those whose stories are featured in her documentary The Hungry Heart to visit every high school in Vermont to talk to our students directly about their difficult journeys.
It is critical that we continue to engage our health-care providers in this challenge. Vermont has received a $10 million federal grant over five years to help medical providers intervene earlier with patients who are beginning to see the consequence of substance abuse. We need our medical community to educate their patients on how to better avoid addiction.
We also need more providers trained to offer emotional support and help to those who become addicted, not just dole out maintenance drugs that sometimes find their way back into the drug market. The Affordable Care Act will help us do so because for the first time it requires coverage for substance-abuse disorders and treatment, and it offers the federal support to pay for it.
Our schools also have a greater role to play. We know that risky behavior develops early in life and too often accompanies family difficulties and dysfunction.
When parents struggle, children suffer, and we all pay the price for years to come. This is why we must continue our focus on the earliest years. Our securing a $37 million Early Childhood Education Race to the Top grant will be a huge help in making Vermont a leader in these efforts. And we can make sure all Vermont children have access to quality universal pre-kindergarten to help set them on the right path.
* * *
If you listen to the voices of addiction, you will hear the underlying cause of this disease for too many: a lack of hope and opportunity.
So while we should celebrate that our unemployment rate is low and that our economic outlook is bright, none of us should be content until all Vermonters, including those who are born into poverty, have the same opportunities to succeed and flourish as the most fortunate.
Our best prevention against drug addiction is to create jobs and opportunity for all Vermonters. By providing the best early childhood education in America. By continuing our good work on early college, dual enrollment, and flexible pathways, and by passing my proposal to let more of our kids afford higher education. By building the training and resources for continued job growth. By creating a sensible, affordable, publicly financed, universal-health-care system. By ensuring that every Vermonter, regardless of income, has the chance at success - living, working, and raising their family right here.
All of these proposals are designed to reframe the way we solve drug addiction and drug crime in Vermont, attacking it first as the health crisis that it is, while simultaneously retooling our criminal justice system and strengthening law enforcement.
Just as you expected us to work across agencies and across state and local government to help us all recover from the devastation of a tropical storm, so, too, should you expect us to approach this crisis of drug addiction with coordination and effective action.
This will not happen overnight. But all of us, together, will drive toward our goal of recovery by working with one another creatively, relentlessly, and without division.
We can do this.
I have tremendous hope for Vermont, and for our efforts to overcome this challenge and keep the Vermont that we cherish for generations to come.