Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills has signed an executive order aimed at helping the state deal with an opioid epidemic.
Her order Wednesday calls for making the overdose antidote Naloxone more widely available; logging and mapping overdoses to track "hotspots" in real time; implementing medication-assisted therapy programs; and creating targeted prevention programs.
More than 1,600 people have died in Maine from drug overdoses over the past five years, and people were dying a rate of more than one a day in 2017.
Mills made addressing the crisis part of her campaign for governor.
She already appointed an opiate response director, Gordon Smith. And Corrections Commissioner Randal Liberty wants to introduce medication-assisted therapy that includes anti-craving prescriptions to address substance use disorder in the prison system.
