With just days left in this year’s legislative session, lawmakers on Beacon Hill said they have reached an agreement on a bill aimed at dealing with the state’s opioid crisis.
The compromise bill announced early Tuesday evening removes language that would have authorized safe injection sites for people living with addiction.
“This commitment represents the Legislature’s continued commitment to preventing overdose deaths and promoting recovery by expanding access to services and supports for people with substance use disorders and empowering the dedicated professionals and staff who serve them,” Sen. Brendan Crighton, D-3rd. Essex and Rep. Adrian Madaro, D-1st Suffolk, the bill’s lead negotiators, said in a joint statement.
Crighton, of Lynn, and Madaro, of East Boston, said they were “grateful to our colleagues in the House and Senate for their contributions to this broad legislation, which will affirm our public health approach to substance use in the Commonwealth”.
Opioid-related overdose deaths fell 10 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, the largest year-over-year decline in two decades. But the crisis still killed more than 2,000 Bay Staters for the eighth straight year, The State House News Service reported.
The House and Senate had previously passed legislation requiring health insurers to cover treatments and services for people at risk of overdose; those with a substance use disorder and those in recovery, legislative negotiators said in their joint statement.
The bills also established licensing practices for recovery coaches to “better support this critical and emerging field in the substance use disorder workforce and to ensure oversight and accountability.”
Safe injection site language, supported by the Senate but opposed by the House, slowed the bill’s progress. The compromise presented Tuesday is the product of weeks of closed-door negotiations between the two chambers.
The compromise language introduced Tuesday “retains language to end the practice of reporting mothers to the Department of Children and Families simply for taking medication prescribed by their doctor to treat substance use disorder and other physical health conditions and behavioral,” the lawmakers said.
It also requires that “the state develop a plan to end the practice of sending men civilly committed to substance abuse treatment to prison.”
It also includes strategies to increase access to overdose reversal medications as the opioid epidemic continues across the state and nation, the State House News Service reported.
“I think this bill will save lives, which we don’t say lightly,” Crighton told the wire service after dropping off the final deal in the House Clerk’s office.
The North Shore lawmaker also highlighted “increasing access to the overdose reversal medication, naloxone, making sure it’s available to anyone who needs it without any stigma or penalty.”
The compromise bill “will be adopted in the coming days,” the two lawmakers said in their joint statement.