AUGUSTA, Maine - Gov. Paul LePage is chastising Democrats for not supporting his proposal to hire more drug enforcement agents, judges, and prosecutors.
LePage held a press conference today at the State House, and called for a response to the state's drug addiction problems on multiple fronts, with a focus on enforcement. But Democrats say they can't support the governor's proposal unless more attention is paid to treatment.
Every year, Gov. LePage said, the statistics on drug addiction in Maine get worse. "Last year, 961 babies were born addicted to drugs. Over 200 people died a premature death through overdose of drugs."
And so, LePage said, the state needs to stop the influx of drugs at their source. "We want to take the dealers who come up from New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut - we want to stop them on the highway and make them the guest of the state for 25 years if we have to, without hurting our children."
The governor says Maine's team of 35 drug enforcement agents isn't big enough to combat the problem, and he's proposing the addition of seven more agents, four district attorneys, and four judges, at a cost of about $5 million.
LePage made a similar proposal last year, but it failed to garner enough support in the Legislature. "You should be disgusted with the behavior of some of these legislators that want to continue to ignore the killing of our children," LePage said. "They are weak on drugs. They simply don't want to deal with the problem."
"We completely support the governor's bolstering of the drug crisis we have here in the state," says Democratic Rep. Lori Fowle, the House chair of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. Fowle says she also wants to know how much funding will be devoted to drug addiction treatment.
"He has an initiative to support agents. He has an initiative to support judges and prosecutors. And I haven't gotten answers on any initiatives that support treatment of drug addiction in the state of Maine," she says, "which is part of the crisis."
Members of the LePage administration say the state has already devoted more funds to treatment, pointing out that from 2008 to 2014, funding for methadone treatment increased from $6.8 million to $8.3 million. Now it's time, LePage officials say, to devote more money to law enforcement.
But focusing efforts on sending drug dealers to jail is a strategy that Brent Miller of Discovery House - an addiction treatment center in Bangor - disagrees with. "This is a disease - a medical disease," Miller says. "And the only way to actively get well, for anyone to get well with any disease, is to seek appropriate treatment."
Miller points out that some patients lost access to treatment due to cuts to MaineCare, and reimbursement rates for clinics have decreased by 25 percent in the past four years.
And no matter what the cost, Miller says the state is better off devoting dollars to effective treatment. "Sending people to jail, first off, is much more expensive. The average figure is about $49,000 per year. Treatment is $3,000 a year."
But the push to tackle the drug issue from the supply side is one that LePage and Republicans are standing firm on.
"The reality is we will never win the war on drugs," says Republican Senate President Mike Thibodeau. "We will continue to fight that war for decades to come. But if we can shave the margins, if we can dry up the supply and make it harder for people to peddle this awful stuff to our children, then we ought to be doing that."
It's an issue that the Legislature will continue to debate as it works to pass a state budget.
A.J. Higgins contributed reporting to this story.
