I think that the overall intent of this bill is good; I think that it could have been a lot better. If I had more time I would have loved to have put an amendment in. The situation we’re facing here in this country and in this state with opioid addiction is absolutely horrendous, I think it’s 110,000 people dying a year in this country—astronomically more than 9/11. So, hopefully this will help, but my concern is that in looking at the statistics, only about three percent of people ever get off of drug addiction.
It’s imperative, in my mind, to spend the time and the effort in the upfront, before they get addicted. In order to do that, you really have to know what are the communities, what are the demographics that are impacted the most. So I tried to find out in committee but didn’t have the time there to find out, Are we drilling down on the demographics? The best example I could think of is in the AIDS epidemic when it first came out, nobody seemed to know anything about who is impacted the most, so the money was just kind of splashed and gushed all over the place. Then finally, they finally realized that it was certain demographics massively impacted, but the larger general population was not. So the resources went where they’re supposed to go. My concern here is when I said, What are they looking for in terms of the demographic information, so we can drill down and get the resources where they’re supposed to go. They said, Well they’re not precluded from getting that, they may ask for the relevant demographic information. To me that is the starting point, and that was my concern in committee and it’s my concern here. The first thing that you have to do is find out who—what parts of the population are most impacted to get those resources there.
This is permissive; you can do that and I think it aught to have been the starting point. I, again, think that the intent is good, still haven’t made up my mind if I am going to go “yes” or “no” on this, but it certainly could have been a vastly better bill.
Senator McCann’s statement is as follows:
Today I rise in support of Senate Bill No. 133, which would create the overdose fatality review team, to provide the legal authority to counties or a cooperative group of counties throughout Michigan to establish these teams. In recent years, we’ve all seen the rise of illicit opioids in our communities and their devastating impact on families across our nation—in fact, just this April in Kalamazoo County, we experienced a tragedy of 18 overdoses within 24 hours, resulting in 10 hospitalizations and seven deaths.
Stories like these have become far too common in all of our districts. As we seek solutions to remedy this growing epidemic, it is crucial that we utilize the experts in our communities to continue to investigate the root causes so that we might better prevent these tragedies. OFRTs will be able to discuss drug overdoses with the frontline responders to best understand risk factors, identify trends, and propose harm-reduction efforts to reduce future drug-related deaths. My legislation would make this an option, but not require it of any county. This bill also grants appropriate confidentiality protections for victims and families involved, similar to existing review teams for child and elder fatalities.
We face and continue to contend with the indiscriminatory opioid crisis in all our communities. This is a tool—to the good Senator, I respect your thoughts and input—this is not an overall solution to everything under the sun, and is not even necessarily going to prevent all the deaths that we see, but it’s a tool in the toolbox. It’s not the magic tool, but it’s an additional tool in the toolbox so that we can help try to get ahead of these tragedies. I ask for your support on Senate Bill No. 133.
The following bill was read a third time:
House Bill No. 4619, entitled
A bill to amend 1956 PA 218, entitled “The insurance code of 1956,” by amending section 2027 (MCL 500.2027), as amended by 1998 PA 26.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: