Raimondo signs executive order to deter opioid overdoses

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Gov. Gina M. Raimondo signed an executive order on Thursday to expand efforts to curb the "alarming rate of deaths" due to opioid overdoses.

Raimondo was joined at the public signing by the White House’s "drug czar," Richard Baum, acting director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Baum is in Providence for the summer meeting of the National Governors Association.

The 18-point executive order ranges from a public outreach campaign to prevent opioid abuse to encouraging police departments to create diversion programs similar to those in West Warwick and Gloucester, Massachusetts, that help people addicted to opioids get into treatment. 

Among the governor’s directives:

— Establish a family task force so that those directly affected by the opioid epidemic can help guide the task-force’s efforts;

— Provide all opioid prescribers in the state with electronic feedback of their prescribing practices compared with colleagues in their same specialties;

— Expand access to alcohol-free and drug-free homes for people in recovery;

— Create and disseminate consent forms for hospitals to allow patients to agree to peer recovery services as they do other medical services; and

— Hire five nurse care managers in "high-risk" communities to help train health-care providers in medication-assisted treatment.

The signing took place at the regular monthly meeting of the governor's overdose-prevention task force.

Last year, 336 Rhode Islanders died of accidental drug overdoses, up from 290 deaths in 2015, an increase of 16 percent, state health department data shows.

"Sometimes it feels like we’re throwing the kitchen sink at this crisis" and nothing is working, Raimondo said, "but we’re committed. ... We’re not gonna stop until we’ve tackled this crisis."

The executive order is Raimondo’s second to address the opioid crisis since she took office; the first, signed in August of 2015, created the Governor’s Overdose Prevention and Intervention Task Force.

Raimondo had set a goal in 2015 of reducing by one-third the number of deaths from opioid overdoses in Rhode Island within three years, or by 2018. At the time, health officials reported that the previous year 215 people died of opioid overdoses.

The rise in overdose deaths continues nationwide, despite the reduction or leveling-off prescription opioids, Baum said, because of the entrance of the potentially deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl into the illicit drug supply. He credited Rhode Island as being among the states where "people are coming together from different walks of life" to respond to the opioid epidemic.

Nationally, overdose deaths in 2016 are expected to number about 60,000 when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention releases final figures in December, Baum said.

The Trump Administration has committed to address the problem, Baum said. The fiscal 2018 budget includes $10.8 billion for treatment funding, a nearly 2 percent increase from funding in fiscal 2017, according to a White House news release. That $10.8 billion includes $500 million in state grants authorized in 21st Century CURES Act.

Trump's fiscal 2018 budget request for the national drug policy office is just under $368.6 million, a spokesman for the office said in an email. That's 5 percent, or $19.5 million, less than the office’s budget for fiscal 2017.

 — lardit@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @LynnArditi