Vermont continues to experience unprecedented numbers of drug overdoses. Drug overdose killed 251 Vermonters 2021, nearly a 35 percent increase from the prior year and well over double the number of deaths occurring in years immediately preceding the pandemic. 

Instead of focusing all available resources on reducing the potential harms of drug use, Vermont continues to treat drug use as a criminal offense, thus further stigmatizing, traumatizing, and marginalizing people who drugs, pushing them away from life-saving connections, and causing new harms in the lives of those arrested. It’s time to rethink that approach and end the use of the criminal-legal system to address drug use. 

Criminalizing drug use has been ineffective in preventing drug use, causes more harm in people’s lives, and heightens the risk of overdose, while creating barriers that make it harder to link people who need help with available services. Even the fear of arrest pushes many people away from services that may help them remain safe and healthier. 

Increasingly experts are acknowledging the psychological, economic and health-related harms created by using arrests. Simply arresting people creates new harms, including that:   

•  Arrest records and publications are often extremely difficult, if not impossible to remove from the public domain and have detrimental impacts on future employment and housing opportunities, access to credit and professional licenses;

• Risk of overdose increases substantially after periods in jail or prison.  An individual is substantially more likely to die from a fatal overdose within the first two weeks after release from a period of incarceration;

• Criminal convictions reduce lifetime earning potential and deepen inequality.  People convicted of a misdemeanor see their annual earnings reduced by an average of 16 percent;

• Criminalization of drug use has been a significant driver of racial disparities. Studies have shown that, despite similar rates of drug use and sales between Black and white people, Black people continue to be arrested, prosecuted and jailed for drug offenses at higher rates.

 The use of law enforcement resources to make arrests and prosecute people for their substance use diverts resources that should be used for harm-reduction efforts focused on saving lives and helping people connect with needed services, including voluntary, community-based treatment and recovery services. Instead of continuing to waste time and funding for police, forensic laboratories, evidence handling, court administrators, Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and many others involved in such cases, we must prioritize investments in community-based, life-saving behavioral-health services. 

It’s time to build a better, public-health focused approach to drugs for Vermont

 This legislation would take significant steps toward building a better system of care for Vermonters who may need services to address substance use disorder, and better protect our neighbors from accidental overdose. Our proposal makes clear that we shouldn’t put people in handcuffs to get them help. 

 Specifically the legislation would:

• Eliminate criminal penalties for possessing an amount of a drug that is consistent with personal use, and eliminate criminal penalties for sharing such amounts without compensation. Possession of such low-level amounts would be subject to only a civil fine of up to $50 that would be waived if the person participated in a health needs screening or if the person has been diagnosed with substance use disorder.
  

• Establish a Drug Use Standards Advisory Board, comprised of experts in substance use disorder, people with lived experience, harm reduction and treatment service providers, and academic researchers to determine evidence-based levels of possession (benchmarks) for each drug commonly used;

• Require VT Helplink to develop a standard system for referring individuals to obtain a voluntary comprehensive health needs screening.
  

• Explicitly authorize the operation of drug checking programs by community-based organizations where individuals could bring a substance they possess to be tested to determine the composition of the substance and identify any unexpected substances or contaminants. The bill would protect people bringing a substance to such a program and those operating the program from criminal or civil liability for the handling of any such substances, and would establish a pilot project to support the development and operation of such programs throughout the state.

• Require the Secretary of Administration to submit a report to the General Assembly regarding the budgetary impacts that would be projected to result from the elimination of criminal penalties for persons in possession of personal-use quantities of criminal substances in Vermont.