Wow. The governor of Maine is truly a dick.
When Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bill allowing pharmacists to give out an anti-overdose medication without a prescription, he said, “Naloxone does not truly save lives; it merely extends them until the next overdose.”
So according to LePage, heroin addicts should just die already and stop being such a bother.
This is a huge step for dismantling the incredibly costly and ineffective drug war. Test cases in Portugal and Switzerland have shown that treating heroin addiction as a public health matter opposed to a criminal one is a better way of tackling the issue.
But LePage, who governs a state with an increasingly volatile heroin epidemic, is still stuck in the pack. He wants to tackle the epidemic at its source by going after drug traffickers.
Naloxone is already available without prescription in 30 other states. The drug is completely safe and unable to be abused. It literally makes you unhigh, so there is absolutely no risk in expanding access.
So why would LePage veto such an uncontroversial bill and follow it up with a statement basically saying that heroin addicts should just die already? Maybe because he’s basically America’s Rob Ford.
LePage has suggested shooting drug dealers as a way to curb Maine’s heroin problem.
He also suggested that guys with black sounding names were coming to Maine from the Southern states to sell heroin and knock up the state’s precious white woman.
He also called a state legislature critical of his budget “the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline,” in a television interview.
So after reviewing the evidence, is it surprising that LePage wants more heroin addicts to die in his state? No. But it is troubling that a state suffering from a swelling population of heroin addicts keeps electing a blowhard to be their governor.
Update: Rob Ford, I mean Paul LePage gives 40 seconds of a speech at University of Maine and then inexplicably walks out.