The following is a transcript of a radio address presented by Governor Janet Mills:

Not a week goes by but what I receive a sad letter from a mother or father or someone who’s overdosed on drugs. These are tragedies happening in our state every day.

This week, the Office of the Maine Attorney General released a very sad report. Its annual report of drug overdose fatalities. That report reveals that 2020 was the deadliest year on record for drug overdoses. The report showed that 504 deaths were caused by drugs in 2020, a 33% increase over the 380 the year before in 2019. 336 of those deaths were due to non-pharmaceutical fentanyl, a 30% increase in fentanyl deaths over 2019.

Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.

You know the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult in so many ways, but these terrible drug overdoses are yet another example of how the pandemic has hurt our state and hurt our people and taken lives. My heart breaks for every single life lost to drug overdose. Those who are lost are our friends, and neighbors, and loved ones and community members — people with lives that held meaning.

We can honor those lives and those communities by rededicating ourselves to ending the scourge of overdose deaths in our state, by preventing addiction in the first place, and by expanding access to treatment and recovery options.

This week I signed emergency legislation to establish an Accidental Drug Overdose Death Review Panel. The Panel will be charged with reviewing certain overdose deaths in order to dig deep and learn from those deaths and adjust our prevention policies when needed, with the goal of reducing more overdose deaths.

With this new panel, we can learn a great deal more about the root causes of addiction and we can adapt policies in an agile manner to meet this ever-changing threat, and save lives.

This is just the latest step we are taking to confront the opioid crisis in our state.

We also launched the OPTIONS program which places mobile response teams in each Maine county to promote drug prevention and harm reduction strategies, to connect people directly to recovery services and treatment, and to distribute more than 89,000 doses of naloxone, you know, the lifesaving overdose medication, that’s helped to reverse more than 2,200 reported opioid overdoses recently.

We have recruited and trained more than 530 recovery coaches and we’ve increased the number of Recovery Residences from 101 to 120, and the number of Recovery Community Centers from 9 to 13, with two others now planned for the towns of Lincoln and Ellsworth.

And we have proposed investing $30 million in the budget before the Legislature now to address the epidemic.

Healing our state from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic is a complicated challenge that will not happen overnight. There is no simple solution to saving lives lost to overdose, but prevention is paramount. If this last year has taught us anything it is this: that Maine people will persevere with a boundless belief in the promise and the potential of our state and in all of its people.

If you suffer from substance use disorder or have a family member who does, call 211, or visit the 211 website 211maine.org, or email info@211Maine.Org to get resources. We are ready to help.

This is Governor Janet Mills. Thank you for listening.