The Massachusetts Senate has approved a sweeping bill aimed at fighting the state’s opioid crisis that includes controversial language allowing cities and towns to open safe injection sites.
The majority-Democrat chamber’s action adds a new wrinkle to a last-minute push by lawmakers to get major bills onto Gov. Maura Healey’s desk as formal sessions wrap up for the year on Wednesday.
Senators passed the bill on an unusual, unrecorded 12-3 standing vote; bypassing the usual practice of taking a roll call or voice vote, State House News Service reported.
“This bill is about protecting residents of the state and ensuring we do everything we can to help residents who are battling addiction,” Senate Ways & Means Committee Chairperson Michael Rodriques, D-1st Bristol/Plymouth, said during floor debate on Tuesday.
The chamber’s top budget writer noted that 2,099 people died of from opioid overdoses statewide last year, continuing a seven-year trend of overdose fatalities cresting 2,000 deaths.
“We are continuing to see dangerous levels of fentanyl in the drug supply which is also impacting overdose deaths,” Rodriques continued. “It is imperative we bring residents into recovery using every tool in the toolbox. This bill adds more tools to our toolbox.”
As it’s currently written, the legislation allows cities and towns to opt into several harm-reduction programs.
Those include:
- Needle exchange programs
- Primary care services, including disease prevention and health screenings
- Access to, or referrals for, evidence-based treatment options
- Drug testing services
- Overdose reversal care
- Supervision of individuals who consume pre-obtained substances, according to a Senate summary.
The bill also seeks to increase access to the overdose-prevention drug Narcan, and it directs the state Department of Public Health to DPH to conduct a study on sober homes in the Commonwealth, focusing on the safety and recovery of sober home residents, according to a Senate summary.
“A single overdose in Massachusetts is one too many,” Senate President Karen E. Spilka, D-Middlesex/Norfolk, said in a statement, adding that the bill “makes powerful strides towards mitigating this crisis by helping those coping with substance use disorder reduce harm, find treatment, and achieve recovery that lasts a lifetime.”
The majority-Democrat state House approved its own version of the bill last month. Lawmakers in the lower chamber did not include overdose prevention centers in their version of the legislation.
On Monday, state House Speaker Ron Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, said he had reservations about the Senate’s 11th-hour push to include the language.
The bill now heads to a joint House-Senate conference committee.
Lawmakers could attempt to pass a final bill during informal sessions that begin Aug. 1, but risk a single legislator’s vote derailing it during those sessions, State House News Service reported.
The House bill passed its version of the bill 153-0. Because lower chamber lawmakers did not vote on overdose prevention centers, including the policy in a compromise bill might doom the overall proposal’s chances of passing in informal sessions, the wire service noted.
Sen. John Velis, D-Hampden/Hampshire, a co-chair of the Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery, spoke candidly about his struggle with addiction and substance use disorder on the Senate floor.
“Harm reduction, as far as I’m concerned, is simple. It’s keeping people alive,” Velis said, according to State House News Service. “I’m not sure if anyone else in this room has had an experience, but what I will tell you I know with absolute certainty is that you can’t treat a human being who is dead. You can’t.”
Sen. Robyn Kennedy, a Democrat whose district includes Worcester, said the city logged the highest number of overdose deaths across Massachusetts last year.
“I cannot think of a more important role we can play in representing our community than by passing legislation that truly has the ability to keep people alive,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor. “This bill includes a provision that will allow municipalities to approve the creation of harm reduction center, in consultation with the Department of Public Health, to begin the work to allow residents to have access to these key support services.”
