Across North Dakota, Opioid-Induced Deaths Increased by 125 Percent from 2013 to 2014 Alone

MINOT, N.D. – Building on her efforts to comprehensively tackle opioid abuse across North Dakota, U.S. Senator Heitkamp today convened local leaders in Minot to discuss challenges the Minot community is facing in dealing with a major increase in opioid addiction and abuse, as well as announce the bill she helped reintroduce to help make sure communities are equipped with the resources and tools they need to fight the growing crisis.

Following a tour of Minot’s Community Medical Center – the state’s first medication assisted addiction treatment center – which opened last August and is using methadone to help treat opioid addiction, Heitkamp led a roundtable discussion with local law enforcement, health, and addiction treatment specialists, as well as family members of recovering addicts, about the growing opioid abuse and addiction epidemic growing in the Minot region and across the state. In the Minot region alone, heroin and methamphetamine use increased by 400 and 438 percent in 2015, and according to the Ward County Narcotics Task Force, heroin seizures spiked by 442 percent from 2014 to 2015. During the discussion, leaders spoke about how to implement best practices from others across the state, specifically, the Fargo Mayor’s Blue Ribbon council – a group consisting of law enforcement, education experts, health care workers and other leaders to bring a comprehensive approach to tackling opioid abuse.

At the roundtable, Heitkamp also discussed a bill she helped reintroduce to help bolster these local collaborative efforts by making sure communities have the support they need on the ground to proactively combat opioid addiction and abuse. By establishing a permanent funding stream for those efforts, Heitkamp’s Budgeting for Opioid Addiction Treatment Act (LifeBOAT Act) would provide and expand access to substance abuse treatment across North Dakota – where opioid-induced fatalities in North Dakota increased by 125 percent from 2013 to 2014 alone – and the country, which lost 47,000 Americans to opioid and heroin abuse in 2014.

“Across our state, I’ve sat down with families, law enforcement, and those in recovery who have shared stories of the heartbreaking loss and painful cost of opioid addiction and abuse – and we need all hands on deck to prevent this suffering from growing,” said Heitkamp. “To make sure our towns from Fargo to Minot remain strong and safe, we need to build on the progress Congress made last year, and push for legislation that would generate new financial resources for communities fighting this battle on the ground. It also means using the best practices from communities like Fargo that were dealing with this crisis earlier, which we heard about today. Acknowledging this problem is important – but the work doesn’t end there. We need real community-oriented solutions and resources to fight back.”

Heitkamp first unveiled the LifeBOAT Act last year in Bismarck during a discussion with local leaders to make sure the federal government is treating opioid abuse as the national public health and law enforcement crisis that it is by making available the appropriate education, prevention, and treatment resources communities need to recover and fight back. The LifeBOAT Act would establish a 1 cent stewardship fee on each milligram of active opioid ingredient in a prescription pain pill to fund efforts to provide and expand access to substance abuse treatment. The bill also includes a rebate program for cancer-related pain and hospice care, and exempts drugs used exclusively for the treatment of opioid addiction. That funding could be used for:

• Establishing new addiction treatment facilities, residential and outpatient.
• Recruiting and increasing reimbursement for certified mental health providers providing substance abuse treatment.
• Expanding access to long-term, residential treatment programs for addicts.
• Establishing and/or operating support programs that offer employment services, housing, and other support services to help a recovering addict transition back into society.
• Establishing and/or operating facilities to provide care for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.
• Establishing and/or operating substance abuse treatment programs in conjunction with Adult and Family Treatment Drug Courts.

To read a fact sheet on why this bill is necessary, click here.

This legislation expands on Heitkamp’s legislative efforts to stop opioid abuse from spreading. Last spring, Heitkamp fought for and helped pass bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Senate which is now law to broaden tools available to law enforcement, first responders, and state prescription drug monitoring programs to address the national heroin and opioid abuse crisis. The bill also included legislation Heitkamp introduced which would close loopholes in our federal drug laws to stop foreign drug traffickers before their products reach our borders. Heitkamp’s bill builds on that legislation’s establishment of a recognition of the crisis by developing concrete resources to fight it.

Since fighting North Dakota’s methamphetamine crisis as the state’s attorney general in the 1990s, Heitkamp has been working to stem the tide of addiction, abuse and illegal drug trafficking. On the federal level, Heitkamp has been working to address this issue by:

• Convening statewide community leaders to build a comprehensive approach to tackle opioid addiction and abuse: Since helping announce the LifeBOAT Act, Heitkamp has been gathering leaders across the state to hear directly from them about the challenges they are seeing in their hometwons. Last year, Heitkamp held listening sessions in Bismarck, Grand Forks, Fargo, and Jamestown to take on the opioid abuse epidemic and discuss the federal support these communities need to recover from and prevent opioid addiction. That same month, Heitkamp also joined Fargo’s City Commission for a meeting on a strategic response to the growing opioid addiction and abuse in the community.

• Bringing federal anti-drug crime leaders and resources to North Dakota: Heitkamp brought both current and former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) directors to North Dakota – securing a national focus and strong resources to the state to help fight drug crime as a result.

• Convening statewide leaders to comprehensively battle drug crime and abuse: Heitkamp convened statewide experts and leaders to combat drug crime and abuse to serve on the growing task force of her Strong & Safe Communities initiative, which she initially launched in September 2014 in response to the state’s energy boom.
  
  
• Engaging statewide leaders on the front lines of North Dakota’s opioid addiction crisis: Heitkamp met with facility leaders, medical staff, and tribal leaders during her visits to MHA Nation’s Circle of Life Drug Treatment Center last May and Mercy Hospital in Devils Lake last March where she heard about the unique challenges they face in treating skyrocketing cases of heroin, methamphetamine, and opioid abuse on rural and tribal lands – often due to a lack of recovery resources her bill works to provide.

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