The unveiling this week of Gov. Larry Hogan's strategy to combat heroin addiction and overdoses is prompting understandable cynicism from some of those who have long been involved in the issue. After all, he has now made a big deal out of doing more or less what the state was already doing before he got there. What's more, it's possible to read a racial undercurrent into the way the governor has embraced the issue. "This used to be considered an urban problem," he said, but now it's hitting every community in the state. Where, his critics might justifiably ask, were the governor's fellow Republicans back when heroin was only seen as a problem in a black-majority city?
But all that skepticism misses the point, which is that the governor has now very publicly identified himself with this problem, even more so than his Democratic predecessor did. That makes him accountable for getting results, and even if Mr. Hogan's announcement Tuesday didn't come with major new initiatives or funding attached, it does put him in a vulnerable position politically if he fails to follow through. For those who care about reducing the scourge of addiction and preventing the tragedy of overdose deaths, that's a very good thing.
There were two big problems with the way Mr. Hogan addressed the issue of heroin addiction during last year's campaign. First, he kept making hay of the fact that Gov. Martin O'Malley had not declared a "state of emergency" related to heroin abuse, despite the fact that such a designation would be entirely meaningless. The second is that he displayed no appreciation of the fact that the O'Malley administration had, in fact, been working on the problem in a fairly well coordinated way. He rectified both deficiencies on Tuesday. His administration dropped the "state of emergency" talk, with Lt. Gov. Boyd G. Rutherford acknowledging that there was no legal basis for such a declaration, and he created a task force and a state government coordinating council that more or less mirror existing ones.
Crucially, though, he identified heroin addiction as a public health problem that cannot be solved by law enforcement alone. Consistent with that approach, he announced the donation to the state of 5,000 kits containing naloxone, a drug that reverses heroin overdoses. Some critics have speculated that making the drug widely available would somehow worsen the problem of addiction by making heroin users unafraid of overdosing, but the data tell the opposite story, and public health professionals, including Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, view it as one of the most effective interventions to reduce overdose deaths.
As for Mr. Hogan's motivations, who cares? So long as he isn't focusing resources on any one part of the state to the exclusion of others, what does it matter whether he became committed to this issue because he became aware of its scope in a rural county or a city?
And with all due respect to the efforts the state and local jurisdictions had been making, they were clearly not sufficient to reverse the drastic increase in heroin overdose deaths in recent years, which, as Mr. Hogan mentioned, now exceed the number of homicides statewide. There is clearly work to be done in terms of sharing best practices — for example, programs to make naloxone more available and to train more people in its use, or fatality review teams to determine whether and how an overdose could have been prevented. Some legal changes could be useful, such as relaxing the requirements for writing naloxone prescriptions or strengthening the state's Good Samaritan law. And without a doubt, Maryland needs more funding for drug abuse treatment and mental and behavioral health generally — an area that has been subject to recent cuts by both Messrs. O'Malley and Hogan.
But perhaps the most important thing Mr. Hogan can do to help combat heroin addiction is to keep talking about it. Addiction and treatment are too often stigmatized and kept in the shadows, and the governor helped to break that down by showing real emotion as he discussed the issue and sharing the fact that one of his cousins died from an overdose. The more Mr. Hogan can send the message that drug abuse is a problem that affects people of all races and classes in every part of the state — even the governor — the better.