Opinion: Expanded Good Samaritan law is simple and will save lives

A recent report by the ACLU of Maine finds that out of the 38,893 arrests in 2019, 3,614—or roughly one out of 11— were for drug-related offenses and almost 75% of the people arrested for drug offenses were arrested for possession. At the same time that most of our drug related arrests are for possession we are losing an average of two Mainers every day to overdose—and those numbers only seem to be getting worse. Too often people don’t call for help out of fear of being prosecuted and when an overdose happens that can be the deciding factor of whether someone lives or dies.

Click here to read the full op-ed, first published June 7, 2022 in Beacon.