By Carson Swick
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — A Baltimore City Council hearing Wednesday tackled the city’s response to three mass overdoses in Penn North, as well as the merits of its ongoing harm reduction strategy in dealing with open-air drug markets and the broader opioid crisis.
The hearing of the council’s Public Health and Environment Committee featured testimony from Dr. Letitia Dzirasa, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Michelle Taylor, the recently sworn-in Baltimore health commissioner. Both Dzirasa and Taylor said the city responded well to all three “mass overdoses” — defined as more than five people overdosing in a defined area — seen in Penn North between July and October.
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Dzirasa said the July 10 mass overdose was “striking” because many of the 35 people who exhibited symptoms of an overdose had “atypical presentations,” meaning they were initially unresponsive to Narcan and other common treatments. Dzirasa said 27 of these 35 people were transported to an area hospital by Baltimore EMS, of which seven had “Priority 1” status , which is the most serious. All survived, which Dzirasa attributed to the quick response by city agencies.
“On that day we had… the health department, fire, BPT, and multiple other city agencies that arrived pretty quickly to the scene,” Dzirasa said. “As I noted before, the healthcare on-the-spot van — that’s run by the health department in partnership with Hopkins — was pretty close by, so they were also able to get there pretty quickly.”
Taylor said that on July 14 , Baltimore health officials conducted a “hot wash” of the area to improve preparations for future mass overdoses, which occurred again in Penn North on July 18 and to a greater extent on Oct. 8 — after which they conducted another such exercise.
From these exercises, Taylor said the city developed a “four-fold” mass overdose protocol, which includes:
- Ensure a rapid, coordinated response
- Reduce fatalities
- Expand access to treatment
- Make care more equitable and reduce the stigma of addiction
Harm reduction
Toward the end of the hearing, committee chair Councilman Phylicia Porter asked Stefanie Mavronis , director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE), about the role of the Baltimore Police Department in the city’s Multi Agency Inspection Task Force (MAIF), which broadly deals with quality of life issues caused by prevalent drug addiction. Since late July, BPD has issued just four drug citations in Penn North — perhaps one of the clearest indications of the city’s strategy to “meet people where they are” rather than force addicts into treatment.
“We are talking about how we cannot approach this from a simple public safety perspective, so I wonder if there’s an opportunity for us to re-imagine if BPD is even needed as a leader?” Porter said, suggesting police involvement could be scaled back in favor of community partners.
Mavronis replied that BPD is not the sole leader in addressing quality of life issues. Its community policing division has made inroads in communities like Penn North , but she said challenges remain.
“We know that our majors in each [police] district have their own insights. They know what the challenge corridors are in their district, they know what some of the emerging problems are,” Mavronis said. “We want to make sure we can bring those insights to the table so that all of our operational agencies… and beyond can really hear it from a public safety perspective, but that we don’t just stop there.”
District 4 Councilman Mark Conway , who has made waves with his own opioid hearings as chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee , said the government can’t indefinitely “prop up” communities struggling with overdoses and should instead focus on “empowering” them.
“Sure, we can prune trees, we can pick up trash, we can clean up graffiti and then go away and come back in a month,” said Conway, who announced a congressional bid last week. “Or we can come in, do that work and equip the community to have a system for dealing with that and interacting with agencies without the mayor’s office having to come in with every agency for a couple of days.”
Baltimore resident Thelma Davis , who has been in recovery for more than three decades and now operates a residential treatment facility, told the council she wants to see more talk about “abstinence” from using drugs included in discourse on harm reduction.
“For long-term recovery, I just believe that abstinence is the key,” Davis said. “…What are we going to do for long-term treatment, total abstinence, so people in recovery can really reap the benefits of what it’s like to be ‘normal?”
Porter responded by speaking about the importance of providing a safer and less stigmatized climate for drug users in neighborhoods like Penn North , which she said would include improved housing opportunities. She said that, while abstinence is a noble end goal, “some folks are not ready for true abstinence [and] we have to be mindful of that.”
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