MANDATORY REPORTING LAW IS ESSENTIAL

It is no secret that heroin and OxyContin abuse have reached epidemic
proportions in Massachusetts. During the past year there have been
numerous forums in communities in Essex County to raise awareness of this
terrifying and troubling problem which knows no geographic or
socio-economic boundaries. Since I began to discuss publicly the heroin
and OxyContin epidemic, I have been stopped in supermarkets, at basketball
games and community events.

In these brief, private moments, average citizens have shared
heartbreaking stories of young lives lost to addiction, of helpless
parents searching for treatment beds that don't exist, families being torn
apart by the pressure that drug addiction exerts, and of promising young
lives lost too soon. While this anecdotal evidence mounts, I, along with
many others, have been searching for answers.

What can we do to stem the tide? What can we do to reclaim our young people
- - to treat those who have already fallen victim to the horror of
opiate addiction and to prevent others from going down that dead end road.
As I have met with community groups, concerned citizens, police officers,
and national drug enforcement specialists, several key answers have
emerged: This is not a problem that law enforcement can solve alone.

As one police chief said, "We are not going to arrest ourselves out of this
one." Treatment on demand is essential and simply does not exist in the
Commonwealth today at the level required to meet this epidemic. Prevention,
particularly through aggressive education efforts, is critical and requires
committed people, funding, and information to succeed. The effects of this
epidemic extend well beyond addicts and their friends and families.

Many police chiefs are reporting an increase in robberies, house and car
break-ins, and other such crimes.

That trend will continue as the cost of these drugs increases and more
addicts are forced to steal to support their habit.

There is one key component missing that is needed to direct the limited
resources of our law enforcement, substance abuse, and prevention
agencies: DATA .. consistent and comprehensive information of the number
of opiate-related fatal and non-fatal overdoses by community.

Without hard, real-time numbers of opiate-related drug overdoses, we will
end up spending and wasting more money and time in our fight to stop this
epidemic. That is why House Bill 3128, mandating that hospitals report
suspected overdoses within 24 hours of treatment, is so essential to our
efforts to combat opiate abuse.

Currently, law enforcement agencies learn about fatal and non-fatal
overdoses in a piecemeal, haphazard fashion usually months after they have
occurred. Sometimes we are notified by the Massachusetts Department of
Public Health. Sometimes local police or the medical examiner's office
will inform us of overdoses. The bottom line is that this information does
not serve us as well as real-time, consistent, and comprehensive reporting
required by this legislation would.

Patients receiving treatment will have their anonymity protected. The
information that is needed and which will be most useful is the number of
fatal and non-fatal opiate related overdoses occurring in each community.
With that information law enforcement could allocate its limited resources
to areas that are experiencing high overdose numbers in order to get the
drug traffickers off the streets.

For example, over the holidays there were two overdoses in a seaside North
Shore community in a short period of time. Had my office been aware of
that, the Drug Task Force could have aided the police in that community in
investigating drug activity there in an effort to find and arrest the dealers.

As it happened, we found out in March, much too late to do anything
significant.

Another issue that is stifling our efforts to combat this problem is
denial. Denial is a barrier to finding solutions.

There are communities that still do not want to acknowledge that heroin
and OxyContin abuse have crossed their borders. I can tell you that every
one of the 34 cities and towns in Essex County has had at least one
opiate-related incident occur in the last year. There is still a strong
inclination among some communities to refuse to acknowledge it, or
simply not to believe it. I believe that this denial will wither in the
face of the real-time numbers required by this bill. Finally, and perhaps
most importantly - until we can document accurately the number of lives
lost to these drugs, we will not succeed in securing adequate funds
from our state and federal government for treatment and prevention
programs. Certainly, as any district attorney will say - without
sufficient evidence, the case is lost.

We cannot afford to lose this fight.

Already we have lost too many people. Already, drugs have ruined too many
lives and families.

Those who share their stories with me are on the front lines of a
community and regional war; they are brave people, who in some cases have
allowed the media to put a public face on the problem of heroin and
OxyContin addiction. Until and unless we have a consistent and
comprehensive data stream which will tell the true story of the havoc
wreaked by heroin and OxyContin in this state, this epidemic will continue
to take lives.