Vermont AG’s office launches interactive opioid project website

MONTPELIER – Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan has launched a comprehensive website to provide Vermonters with information about Vermont’s opioid crisis.

The new website provides an interactive map where Vermont residents can locate treatment, prevention, and intervention options available. The website also provides basic information about opioids, updates about the investigation into drug manufacturers’ sales and marketing practices, and information about the work of the AG’s Community Justice Unit.

According to the Agency of Health and Human Services, each day an average of 116 people die in the United States from an opioid-related overdose. In Vermont, over the past five years, 455 Vermonters died from opioid-related overdoses, according to the Vermont Department of Health.

“Helping Vermont through the opioid epidemic is a top priority of our office,” Donovan said in a press release. “We are working every day to find new resources to help Vermonters, and to identify creative approaches to addressing this national crisis.”

The Opioid Project website also includes updates about a multi-state investigation of whether drug manufacturers engaged in unlawful practices in marketing, selling, and distributing opioids. Background information is also available about the work of the AGO’s Community Justice Unit.

The Community Justice Unit was established in 2017 to support community justice programs that are informed by an understanding of addiction and its effect on individuals and their loved ones.

The website also describes basic information about the crisis, such as different forms of treatment, the definition of opioid, and an explanation of the “hub-and-spokes” model of addressing the opioid crisis. Service providers helping Vermonters affected by the opioid epidemic, and who want to share their information on the webpage, can go to ago.vermont.gov/opioids-project/ and fill out the form.