 Hi everyone. Welcome to the Addiction Recovery Channel. I'm Ed Baker and I'm your host. The Addiction Recovery Channel was born out of the devotion to contribute to the elimination of stigma. And the way we planned on doing that was by having guests on the show who were based in science, based in data, based in compassion. And by bringing you accurate information, we would help you to unlearn stigma and unleash compassion, the ultimate goal that we would together save lives. We're very privileged today to have two people with us who have spent a considerable amount of their time, treasure and talent doing exactly that. It's my pleasure to introduce Greg Gardner and David Mickenburg. Greg Gardner is the Senior Policy Counsel for the Drug Policy Alliance, which is a leading organization in the United States working to end the drug war, repair its harms and build a non-punitive, equitable and regulated drug market. Prior to his work for DPA, he practiced law as a public defender for over a decade and served as a legislative staff for several members of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Drug Policy Alliance partners with a number of Vermont-based and national organizations working to shift Vermont's approach to drugs and people who use drugs. Away from a punitive approach to one focused on individual and public health. Thank you, Greg, for being on the show. Thanks for having me, Ed. David Mickenburg is a partner at the Burlington Law Firm, Mickenburg, Dunn and Smith, and has been actively involved in drug policy reform since 1997. He started his career at the Drug Policy Alliance, where he worked on political efforts to reduce the harms associated with the war on drugs, including a multi-year effort to allow Vermonters to access methadone treatment. He currently works on a variety of public policy campaigns, including an effort to decriminalize drugs in favor of a public health approach. Thank you, David, for being on the show. Thanks. Great to be here. Jordan, if you could put on that slide, please, the Centers for Disease Control slide. I'd like to just paint a context for the viewing audience. If you look at this slide, this is from the Centers for Disease Control. This tracks the velocity and the increase in overdose death in Vermont from 2015 to early 2023. If we had a graph that went back to 2010, you would see the drug overdose death toll more than quintupling over 14 years. In 2021 in Vermont, there were 217 deaths. In 2022, it appears when the numbers are finalized, there will be over 240 deaths. And in 2023, it appears from data collected to date that the numbers will eclipse 2022. What's happening in Vermont is every year we set a record, every year is worse than the previous year, with everything we're doing. Now, Gray, you wrote a commentary to be exact, was published in the Vermont Digger in April 6, 2023, a recent commentary. And you titled it, Vermont keeps kicking important drug reforms down the road. And, you know, it was a scholarly article I would recommend it to all my viewers. And I'd like to begin there. You know, what are we doing in Vermont? How are we dragging our feet in Vermont? What are we not doing to end the war on drugs? I know that the Drug Policy Alliance, that's one of your major focuses, what are we doing in Vermont to perpetuate the war on drugs? Well, thanks for highlighting the overdose curve, not only in the United States, but in Vermont. We are in a crisis. And that's what that article was about, that we're in a public health crisis. And instead of completely overhauling what we're doing, instead of completely focusing all available resources on public health solutions to a public health crisis, we continue to have a haphazard approach. We continue to criminalize drug use. We continue to prohibit the use of drugs in a way that pushes people into worse situations, that pushes people into more dangerous situations. We continue to fail to invest in solutions like you've promoted and talked about extensively here on your program, overdose prevention centers. Vermont has been slow to adopt evidence-based solutions like overdose prevention centers that have been shown to be effective and safer around the world are in use in hundreds of places around the world. We've been slow to adopt other solutions as well, although I'm very encouraging that we've started to adopt, that we've gone heavier into working on drug checking over this past year. I think there's been a greater understanding in the legislature and we're going to talk about that. I hope that we need to help give people tools for identifying contaminated substances and give people better information that allows them to change their use in ways that may keep them safer. But yet the point of that article I think was just to highlight that we really need to be focusing all of our resources on evidence-based solutions and to stop creating more harm, which we've been doing not only in Vermont but throughout the country in rejecting drug equalization and continuing to think that it's some sort of radical solution when it is a very pragmatic solution to reducing harm in people's lives. You know, we're going to dedicate a substantial amount of time toward decriminalization. I'd like you first though to just dig a little bit deeper into this idea of the war on drugs. You know, for my viewing audience, what do we mean when we say that? What is the war on drugs? How did it start? How did we all get inundated into it? What is going on in our culture? You know, the drug war goes back beyond it's more modern inception 50 years ago. There have been policies throughout over a century in the United States that have criminalized people for what they put into their bodies. And those drugs, those laws have come about largely for racial targeting, for purposes that have been used, have been intended to marginalize people, to marginalize specific groups of people. Over the past 50 years, we've ramped that up significantly. I think everybody at this point understands how much money and how much of our resources, how much of our personnel have been put into arresting people, into criminalizing people, and incarcerating people for what they put into their bodies. You know, but when we talk about the drug war, we're not just talking about mass incarceration. I think when people think about the drug war, they think mass incarceration, and certainly mass incarceration is a huge problem. We've incarcerated, you know, we have now about 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, and one in five of those are in prison for a drug-related offense. We imprison more people than any other nation in the world. Women are one of the fastest growing segments of the prison population in the U.S., you know, largely because of draconian drug laws. Nearly, I think it's 45% of women in federal prison, and 25% in state and local prisons, in jails and state prisons are incarcerated for drug offenses. And over half of those have minor children, so we're perpetuating harm, and there are cascading effects of this. But when we talk about the drug war, we're not just talking about mass incarceration. We're talking about all the other components that exacerbate poverty, discrimination, unemployment, poor health, and instability in general. We've created these systems within civil systems that create punishments for people in housing systems so that you're subject to removal from housing if you're alleged to have used drugs. There are a number of different penalties that we've built in from driver's licensing to professional licensing, to background screening, that keep marginalizing people, keep segmenting people and isolating them from systems that provide more stability. And that's all part of the drug war in many ways that's been done by intent, with the intent to marginalize certain segments of our communities. It's had a racially disparate impact. People who are people of color and white people use drugs at the same rates. They sell drugs at the same rates. And yet black and brown people tend to be criminalized. They are criminalized, prosecuted, incarcerated at higher rates than white people. So the drug war is extensive, and it is not subsiding in a substantial way. It continues to be perpetuated throughout the country and even in Vermont through arbitrary enforcement. I think it's interesting, and I want you to jump in whenever you feel you should, David. I think it's interesting when you dig down into this concept of war on drugs, how profound it becomes. You know, we've all heard of critical race theory. I, for one, think somebody should begin to study critical stigma theory and see how stigma against people who use drugs has infiltrated every level of American society. We've been toward it for at least 50 years as policy, as public policy, as political policy. And to me it's one of the main things that keeps people from embracing like humane efforts to help people with drug use issues. Do you care to comment on stigma or what we're talking? Anything? Absolutely. Thank you. So it's interesting, I was reflecting as Gray was talking about what Vermont is doing now and what Vermont's not doing now. We've been here before when DPA and myself started working on drug policy issues in Vermont in the early 2000s. Vermont was one of six states that didn't have methadone treatment. We didn't have needle exchange. We didn't have a hub and spoke model. All these things we talk about in the lock zone treatment, buprenorphine, we didn't have any of that. And we were stuck in this drug war mentality that the folks that use consumed drugs don't deserve our love, compassion, and don't deserve the same level of humanity that other people do. Now what's hopeful for me about this time now, which was reflected by the history of what happened then, is that Vermont did take affirmative steps. We were leaders in the country. We not only got methadone treatment, but we developed a broad system of buprenorphine distribution. We were the first state in the country to allow for naloxone to be sold over the counter. We worked to pass one of the most, in fact, the most far-reaching Good Samaritan law, meaning people who were overdosing could call 911 without fear of prosecution. And it was by far a model for the rest of the country. And the way that we accomplished all that was by having folks' voices impacted folks, folks that normally live in a world of stigma come forward and say, we deserve these same rights, we deserve the same protections that everyone else had, and it had a powerful impact. And I see that sort of energy forming again. It's been a while since we've worked to push the envelope. We did some of that this year. We've had some of those conversations last year in the legislature, but I'm encouraged by our history, even though we have more to do now and more to do around stigma, around the policies that we implement, we've been here before and we've stepped up. And so I feel enlivened by the opportunity to again bring back the voice of people that are impacted. And then the people that are impacted aren't just people consuming drugs. It's the families, it's employers, it's all of the people that are impacted, the children of people, the ripple effects throughout society that happens when we don't give somebody their full humanity. Yeah, I mean, that is an excellent point. Coincidentally, this morning I was at a webinar with Dr. Yao Galo. He's the equivalent of the health commissioner in Portugal. And he spoke about exactly what you're speaking about. The facilitator asked him what it was about Portugal that got them to enact progressive humane approaches to people who use drugs, mainly decriminalization of drugs and decriminalization of using drugs. And he emphasized that what happened in Portugal in the late 70s and 80s was there was an explosion of drug use. And by the 90s, the early 90s, there was no one in Portugal who could say, you know, drug overdose is occurring within marginalized populations. It's those people who it's happening to. It was happening to everyone. And that caused a momentum to form in the culture that enabled the decriminalization of drugs and the humane approach to people who use drugs. And I know you see it, I know you see it in America today. That's what's happening. Everyone is involved in this. It's not, oh, his son died. You know, it's, you know, my nephew died, his son. You know, we're all involved in this. And I can feel the momentum developing that you're pointing out. There's great resistance to it. We all know that. Maybe would you continue a little bit, because I know you spend a lot of time in the legislature. Would you continue a little bit with some of the advances that were made specifically this year? Last year we had the veto of 728, the governor vetoed a bill that was designed to study over those prevention centers. But this year, the advocates came back. Do you care to elucidate that a little bit? What were some of the measures that were passed? Sure, yeah. This year, many of the provisions that were included in the bill that the governor vetoed resurface in a bill H222, which was a real harm reduction focused bill. There was a lot of really good elements of harm reduction, making it easier to access treatment, doing things like decriminalizing drug paraphernalia, or harm reduction tools so people can access safe harm reduction tools. There was a variety of provisions to strengthen our harm reduction laws. And that was exciting. And we also eliminated the sunset on the decriminalization of buprenorphine. Vermont was the first state in the country to decriminalize buprenorphine in certain amounts, had a sunset on it. The governor, when it became law, said we wanted to study it to see what the impacts would be. And lo and behold, the impacts, all the negative impacts that people had talked about didn't materialize. And so we eliminated the sunset on that, made that a permanent piece of legislation. As the bill made it through the process, we really made, I think, a tremendous step forward in line with the type of work that we were doing decades ago in Vermont, and Gray had mentioned this around drug checking. And I found it interesting, I saw an article today that the Biden administration is now launching a new policy, and I haven't seen the details, Gray may know more about it, related to xylazine and fentanyl. And for those that know xylazine is an animal tranquilizer that's added to fentanyl to stretch out the length of the effects of fentanyl with very potentially dangerous impacts on people that consume it. But part of what the national platform that the Biden administration had come forward with was increased access to testing. And generally the form that that's taken is testing strips. So fentanyl testing strips or xylazine testing strips to see whether or not there are those substances in the drugs you're consuming. What we did in Vermont modeled under a pilot program that was being done in southern Vermont, was we passed a law that was included in H22 to provide not just access to drug checking services where you can bring your drugs to get tested by machines that will give you everything that's in the drugs for your own protection. Not just the authorization of that, but we provided criminal immunity for people to bring their drugs in. We said we value your life more than arresting you for having a small amount of drugs on your possession. We provided criminal immunity for the people testing the drugs, similar to what we would be talking about for overdose prevention centers. And we also in the provisional law allowed for the dissemination of information to the community to say that in an anonymous way that we can say if we find drugs that are contaminated, we're going to let you know so you can be safe and we're also going to put out information in the community. And the best part of it for me is that we took money from the opioid settlement funds and used that money to pay for this so that we can have these machines throughout the state. And to me that's a really major accomplishment and major step forward that the legislature took. And the coalition which I think we can talk about was sort of instrumental in making that happen. And so very exciting. Absolutely. Can I jump in on that real quick? One of the things about this drug checking provision that I think is so significant is exactly what David said. It really prioritizes the health and safety of the individual as well as the community safety getting information out to the community like we would do in a TV outbreak or in COVID tracing. We try to get information that helps us identify where the threat is and try and help people make choices that are better for them that help them live in a safer way. But that premise of trying to focus on the health and safety of the person is central to harm reduction. It is central to shifting toward a public health model that gets away from, as you put it, focusing on stigmatizing people, focusing on criminal sanctions, the threat of criminal sanctions that cause people to use in more dangerous ways and perpetuate the overdose crisis. So I think it's a really important step and I think there's similar provisions that need to be incorporated into some of the other harm reduction measures like overdose prevention sites. The legislation would have similar provisions to ensure that people are not going to be criminalized, that we're emphasizing open doors. We're encouraging people to come in to harm reduction sites by saying, you're safe here, you're not going to be arrested if you come in here. And by shifting that focus in this specific way with drug checking, I think we make a step in the right direction in terms of reducing stigma. I would like to go back to your question about stigma, if that's okay. Oh, yes, of course. Absolutely. You know, you asked about stigma and how things are progressing in Vermont. And I think that there is a greater understanding in Vermont and throughout the country of the nature of addiction as a medical condition of substance use disorder as a medical condition, as a chronic medical disease that is involving the brain circuitry. I think there's a better understanding of that. There's an understanding by the health department. And I think their messaging is very clear in Vermont that stigma is a problem. I think it's actually somewhat perplexing that the Department of Health has a major campaign. They have a proactive effort to destigmatize drug use. They have an entire section of their website dedicated to ending addiction stigma. I think it says on there, together we can end addiction stigma. To me, one of the most significant forms of stigma is caused by the criminal legal system, by arresting people, by publicly shaming them, and labeling them with a criminal record that goes on for years that can last a lifetime. And you had Nora Volkov, the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, on your show. Director Volkov has written extensively about the impacts of stigma on people's lives and about criminalization and the effect of criminalization on people's health. If I can read one of her quotes, I think it's just very poignant. It's that punitive policies around drugs mark people who use them as criminals. And so that contributes to the overwhelming stigma against people contending with an often debilitating and sometimes fatal disorder, and even against medical treatments that effectively address it. And stigma has major negative impacts on health and well-being, which explains why only 18% of people with drug use disorders receive treatment for their addiction. I think that kind of sums up why decriminalization or moving criminal penalties is just so important. And there are so many other impacts of the harms of criminalization that we can get into. But in terms of the stigma, I think we just need to get over the hump of realizing that the criminalization, the prohibition in general, of saying that you are reprehensible, you are to be labeled with a criminal penalty if you use a substance in an illicit way. Until we start to realize the damage that that's doing, we can't truly address all the harms that are occurring. That's eloquently put and accurate. And we couldn't be more on point addressing this on the show today. Just to reiterate, Nora Volkov, in another article, she tells a vignette of a gentleman in Puerto Rico with xylazine sores, sores, soft tissue infection caused by the injection of xylazine, which you mentioned earlier. And the man is in danger of having to have his leg amputated, and she's with him, and she's trying to get him to come into the medical center for medical care, and he refuses medical care. And the reason he refuses medical care is to avoid the indignity of stigma. And this is what we have in America. We have an entire population of people who are literally about to die with very severe drug use disorder, injecting lethal unregulated drugs who are alienated from our systems because our systems have searched them, handcuffed them, incarcerated them, and stigmatized them for decades. This is the population when you both mention harm reduction, my heart jumps for joy, because this is the population that harm reduction is just so uniquely set up to embrace non-judgmental, unconditional safety. Come to us as you are. We'll meet you where you are. We're not going to make any demands on you. And I agree with you. I think America is funny. We're making progress in different levels in different places. It's kind of haphazard. The only real step is decriminalization. So, Gray, I wanted to ask you, I know that you're involved on a national level. What are you saying nationally in other states? Is there any state that we should be looking at that's saying, wow, this is what they've done. We should try to replicate that as closely as possible. Well, I think there's a movement reducing the harms of criminalization throughout the country. I think there is a movement that people realize. I mean, national polls show that 66% of people agree that we shouldn't be criminalizing people for substance use. The numbers are way higher here in Vermont. It's 84% of people think that drug use should not be criminalized. Possession of low-level amounts of drugs should not be criminalized. It's astounding, and it's a bipartisan agreement on the issue in many ways. So, yeah, I think that there is a movement around the country to really change the way we're doing things. Oregon is the best example, of course. The DPA had worked with partners, allies in 2000 to work toward the implementation, the passage and implementation of a ballot measure in Oregon that would decriminalize low-level possession of all substances. That passed by a strong majority in 2000. Almost 60% of Oregon voters supported it. And the measure itself not only eliminated low-level criminal penalties, but it also provided for shifting significant funds into woefully under-resourced treatment and harm reduction systems. They made available in the first two years over $300 million to invest in expanding behavioral health networks throughout the state. And they also recaptured upwards of in the first period they've assessed, they recaptured over 40 million in funding that was going to law enforcement that was freed up by the ballot measure. So Oregon is the best example of trying to make resources available in a better way and to remove the barriers of criminalization that prevent people from getting connected with services. Since that passed in 2000, we saw, in 2020, we saw significant efforts around the country to try and do similar things. We've seen legislation throughout New England, through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Maine. There are states throughout the rest of the country as well, Washington State, Kansas, Kentucky, Texas. I mean, you see decree bills all over the country. And there's serious consideration of these measures in a lot of different places. But up north, you know, in Canada, it's one of the best examples. Canada, as you know, just, well, Vancouver, in January of this year, implemented by waiver from the National Health Authority an emergency measure to decriminalize the levels of all substances and also to invest heavily in harm reduction and treatment addiction services. So they have done what other states should be looking toward is addressing this as a public health emergency, as an emergency that affects all of us. When you see fatality rates like you showed at the beginning of this program, I think all policymakers should start to realize that the number one priority should be to stop causing harm and to get resources to addiction services treatment as quickly as possible. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Can I just add one thing? Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's just, I think about, as Grace talking, as you're talking, I would think about, imagine another, one of the most deadly drugs in the country, nicotine. And imagine that instead of doing what we've done, which said, let's educate to try to bring rates of nicotine youth rates down, which has been effective here in Vermont. Let's talk to people about harm reduction. Let's offer alternatives to smoking cessation and things like that. Instead of doing that, imagine we said, we're going to put people in prison for smoking cigarettes. We're going to put people in prison for drinking alcohol. I mean, when we're talking about drugs, it's good to put it in the context. I don't see any legislation around the country to make alcohol illegal, cigarettes illegal. There are harms associated with both of them. Serious harms. But the harms associated with the illegality and the criminalization are so significant that that wouldn't be contemplated. And so I think just sort of picking back on what Gray was saying, looking at these policies within the framework of is what we're doing causing more harm and I think the evidence shows that it clearly is. Absolutely. And thank you for that perspective. I think that harm reduction perspective is absolutely essential. Crucial. I wanted to just note that both of you have alluded to sort of strands of decriminalization in Vermont. Residual drugs at drug testing. There was the Good Samaritan Laws. So it looks like we have the beginning. We have some budding ideas, some budding acceptance of decriminalization. I think maybe it's time to talk a little bit about coalition building in Vermont, what you've been doing in Vermont and what your sense is of the momentum in Vermont toward eventual decriminalization. Well, that's great. Yeah, and in fact, Gray had been mentioning bills all over the country. Vermont has decriminalization legislation that was put in. There's two bills. H-423 is in the House. S-119 in the Senate. We had 47 sponsors of the House bill, which is I think probably the most in the country. A number of legislators from all over the state with different perspectives coming together to say that the current system has failed. We need to move towards a public health model. It was really inspiring. In the Senate, we had 11. Over a third of the Senate said that this policy that we currently have is no longer working. So we're seeing a lot of growing conversations and growing support for this effort. And a lot of that is due to the growing coalition. Gray and IU and others have been working together over the last two or three years to bring a variety of different groups together. We have our harm reduction groups. We have criminal justice reforms groups. We have women's groups. We have the Burlington FC green soccer club. A lot of different types of folks seeing that it's an organization called Decriminalized Vermont and folks seeing that the current policy has failed. It's not really an organization. This group of, this collaboration of folks coming together started with just a handful of groups and now has grown to over two dozen groups and growing. And so, for instance, when we were talking about the drug checking piece, that wasn't included in the House passed version for a variety of reasons. We held a press conference with this coalition of groups and brought really poignant stories to the forefront. People were saying we can no longer accept that we are going to have to go blindly and tell people that they just get what they get and whether they die, it doesn't matter to us. And that coalition came together and forcefully said that we need change and that change happened. So it was really encouraging. And I think this is going to be a growing movement because as you said, it's based on data science. It's based on compassion and love. And it touches everyone. Absolutely. I think that's the key. It touches everyone. I mean, not only do a majority of people have some connection to this issue. They know somebody who's overdosed. They know somebody who suffers from substance use disorder. But also I think people from different political backgrounds and different ideologies, I mean, have a coherent interest in this particular issue. The harms of criminalization affect us in so many ways, not only from, you know, the overdose issue, but to the compassion toward other people that providing assistance to other people, the civil liberties. I think there are a lot of people who are starting to realize that the harms of criminalization are so broad that it's just not worth it anymore. It never was effective. It never affected the rates of substance use. It never affected the price. It never reduced the supply. It hasn't been effective for over 50 years. And people are starting to realize that as well as seeing how much harm is created. I think the overdose issue is particularly salient. I mean, it is the third leading cause of death in custody. You know, when you put somebody in a jail who is suffering from substance use disorder, they are at greater risk than outside of the jail in many ways. One study found that naloxone was administered in only 20% of fentanyl related overdoses in jails and prisons that were studied. And about 40% of deaths occur within the first seven days of someone's admission into a jail. So even if you think that, hey, people aren't getting significant amounts of time, they're just being put into a jail until they can go see a judge or something like that. You're still putting people in danger. But beyond the overdose risk, the increase of overdose risk both in jails and outside of jails, in the first two weeks of release from prison, from incarceration, individuals are almost 13 times more likely to die than the general population. I think that should alarm people. It should alarm people that what we're doing with the criminal justice system is just not helping connect people with treatment. It's not helping people connect with services that they really need to help stabilize their life. Yeah. The harms are so vast. When you talk about housing, when you talk about employment impacts, when you talk about social impacts, mental health impacts, an arrest is just an arrest, not a conviction as associated with a 12 to 14% decline in mental health. So you have increases in PTSD and depression and suicidal ideology. There are a number of impacts on individuals and on people within the community that are heavily policed as well. There are so many different things that I think, I don't know if we showed the graphic of all the various forms of criminalization from the erosion of our constitutional rights or Fourth Amendment rights to the increase in militarized policing that have accompanied criminalization to the housing impacts. There are so many different aspects of this that I think should alarm people and should grow this coalition in different ways, but a much broader movement for reform is growing. No, I wanted, did you want to see that? Did you want that graph up? That would be great. Yeah. Jordan, can you put that graph up? Which was it on the effects of criminalization? Was that it? Yes, I think that's it. I think that just gives people a sense of the many different ways that people are impacted, that our communities are impacted, that harm is great being created by our policies and to no beneficial effect. You know what, elaborate on it and I'll have Jordan put it up once she puts the show together, but you can elaborate on it now. Sure. Yeah, I think people tend to think that people are not heavily criminalized for drug use anymore. But I think the numbers don't bear that out. I think that there are still many, many people who are criminalized for drugs in Vermont and beyond. Initial data that we have shows that 15% of arrests in 2021 were for drug-related offenses. That number, that percentage has held fairly consistent. It's been around 14, 15% for the past four or five years. That's still a huge investment, not only in terms of police resources, but financial resources on strain on the court system. It is a huge waste and it is a huge impact on the community that is just unjustifiable. The racial disparities, we haven't even talked much about the racial disparities here, but the impacts have been tracked in Vermont. People of color are far more likely, 18% more likely to get a sentence of incarceration in Vermont than similarly situated white people and more likely to be criminalized in the first place. There's still a significant amount of criminalization that goes on and I can tell you many different ways that the system was failing. Certainly in my practice, when I was working in the District of Columbia, I saw an extensive amount of wasteful and harmful prosecutions of these types of cases and I believe it still continues. Once again, bringing information like this to the general public who are by and by inundated with false information supporting stigma is absolutely essential, I think, to what we're doing, so I want to thank you for that. And, Gray, I want to underline a term that you used. You used the term alarmed. We should be alarmed and it's this kind of information. When people hear it, they are alarmed and instead of being soothed by this rhetoric about how great we're doing, they feel a sense of urgency. People coming out of jail are 10 times more likely to overdose than people who are not incarcerated. What is that about? What can we do about that? How come we're putting so many people in jail just for using drugs? People begin to ask themselves those kinds of questions and in my experience, if you can connect with them, they begin to ask you, you know, what can I do? If you would ask me about the population in Vermont, the regular citizenry in Vermont, I think everyone is either aware or unaware but either they're aware or unaware but what they're feeling is a tremendous sense of grief and a tremendous sense of responsibility. Everyone has been watching death in Vermont, accelerate in velocity over the past 15 years and nobody knows what to do with it too about it. So people like you, leaders in our state who are out here engaging people, giving us a place to go where we have someone to follow that we can trust in, you know, I just want to express my gratitude to you. I want to tell the viewing audience that if you have a pencil or a pen, jot down drugpolicy.org. So drugpolicy.org, that's the site for the Drug Policy Alliance. Now, I went on to the site and I was, you know, messing around, going to this place and that place and on the site there's one area that says do something. Now, this to me is incredible. When you tap do something and you get to that part, it has a box for people in Vermont to join an advocacy push toward decriminalization. You put in your identifying information and hit submit and a letter gets sent to all your representatives relative to this particular issue. I did it and within a half day I had received two responses from state senators thanking me for my input. So this to me is just, I want everybody in Vermont to know about it because people in Vermont, we want to do something and regular people don't know what to do. So along those lines, what are the coalitions? Are the coalitions reaching out? I know that we're having, just for the viewing audience again, we'll be having a demonstration on the State House lawn on August 31st which is International Overdose Awareness Day from five to seven in Montpelier on the State House lawn with guest speakers on issues letting you know what's going on and what's going to be done. There'll be members of the coalition that you can join there. So I think it's time really. The time is ours. We have to really seize the moment. Yeah, I agree. I think doing things like contacting your legislators, telling them that whether it's a specific piece of legislation or just generally the need to do more, I think that's essential. Talking to local leaders, your local council people and others in your community, talking to law enforcement officials, engaging in dialogue with law enforcement, whether it's our attorney general or your local police and saying, well, do you think this system is working now? Is it working for you as a law enforcement official? Is it working? Has it worked for the last 52 years of the war on drugs? Why don't we start a conversation about that? I think in Vermont, we're lucky enough to be small, so small enough to be able to have those conversations throughout communities, and that's how we're going to help change policy. I mean, right now, you talked about legislation. H72 is a bill related to overdose prevention centers, which you and others have been very involved in. That bill came out of its first committee and its second committee. It's in its third committee and the appropriations committee waiting for action. I mean, that is an immediate step that can be taken to save lives. If we were able to get that through the House and the Senate next year, we have communities, Burlington and other places willing to step up and set one of these up. This is being done around the world. It's being done in New York City right now with On Point. There's lots of stories about it. Almost 1,000 people, probably more than that. Lives have been saved since they've opened those doors. People who are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, grandparents who are now living to, you know, continue their lives and to work towards stabilization. That wouldn't have happened if they didn't have that opportunity. So there's a lot that can be done immediately and we can continue to voice to our leaders the need to make change. I mean, I couldn't agree with you both more and to hear you, you know, speaking about advocacy with the enthusiasm that you have. There seems to be a critical mass being developed in Vermont. Now we're kind of at a tipping point. I watched it at the Opioid Abatement Funds Committee. That committee, as a result of advocacy, both inside the committee and I know, Gray, that you wrote a very poignant letter to the Commissioner of Health on that committee advocating for overdose prevention centers. I watched advocates on that committee fight for six to seven months and as a result, 100% of opioid funds was allocated to harm reduction. Now, they dragged their feet a little bit on overdose prevention centers, but the Health Commissioner put in writing that he would be looking at overdose prevention centers during this phase of the process. They've already had one person come and testify, Brandon Marshall, who is a national expert from Rhode Island, a researcher. He came and testified. They're going to have Kailin C., who is the Senior Project Director at On Point, come and testify. This committee now, you know, with the help of outside advocates, needs to put pressure on leadership to support opioid abatement funds moving into supporting overdose prevention centers. It's happened in Rhode Island, has done it, there's a precedent, it can be done. This is one of the areas that we really need to focus attention. I think if we had folks pushing the Department of Health and the Department of Health would actually have an honest conversation about the science associated with overdose prevention centers, harm reduction centers, and the Department of Health would be supportive of this, we would get this legislation passed without a lot of problems. I agree, I agree. You know, we're going to be closing soon. Greg? And I was just going to add, we are engaging a lot on different groups on these issues, and I think we're having conversations like we're having today with people in different constituencies, different backgrounds, who represent different groups of people, and also people just from different backgrounds. To learn more about why these issues are so important, to learn more about the specifics of how criminalizing is negatively impacting the overdose crisis and impacting our lives in general, and to learn how some of these solutions have been effective throughout the world, particularly overdose prevention centers. DPA works in a lot of different states throughout the country, and we are seeing a lot of energy throughout the country for building networks of harm reduction centers similar to what was done in New York, where the focus is really on the individual's health and safety and helping connect people to services in a voluntary way when they're ready and as they build trust. Instead of creating less trust and less, and more difficulties, more barriers in people's lives. So I think we are engaging a lot of different groups. I think one example is the health communities. David mentioned the health department, but I think people should be aware that in other parts of the country, even the Minnesota Medical Association just passed a resolution in support of decriminalization. There are many other professional associations now that have stepped out and said, you know, we should end criminalization of substance use because it's ineffective and is harming the people that we care about. And particularly with health professionals who are devoted to doing no harm, this seems to be something that we should start to think about more seriously. Thank you. Thank you. And, you know, more and more, it becomes really a matter of professional ethics for people in various fields to step up and adhere to ethics and support what's based in compassion and support what's based in science and data. I want to thank you. Gray, I want to thank you. David, I want to thank you. Thank you. For being on the show and really kind of like pushing the ball forward where you pushed it forward today and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I would just like to kind of rope you into another show closer to the legislative session on decriminalization and overdose prevention centers, maybe with like a choice panel to join two or three other significant others in Vermont that can address this closer to the legislative session. I want to thank my guests for tuning in. I want to remind people drugpolicy.org. That's the Drug Policy Alliance workshop. Go there. It's like a diamond mind and there's all kinds of things, there's ways to learn and ways to participate. In closing, also the event, International Overdose Awareness Day Gathering. On the State House lawn, August 31st from 5 to 7, we're joining a team parenting Vermont which is a group of parents who have tragically lost children to overdose death. So come there and stand in solidarity with us and demonstrate your concern. We want to show the governor, the health commissioner, we want to show everyone that we're concerned about what's happening. We're alarmed about what's happening and we want more being done. So thank you. Thank you Ed for bringing us on the show and doing everything you're doing to raise awareness of these issues. I would just add to one other resource is the dcrimvermont.org website which has a tremendous amount of additional resources as well and information about many of the efforts that we're doing, the poll that we discussed today and many other aspects of the legislation that have been put forward. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for remembering that.