The ground rules for opening needle-exchange programs have changed now that Gov. Charlie Baker approved new language that could pave the way for more of these clinics to open statewide.
The revisions to the law lift the cap on the number of state-sponsored needle-exchange clinics, and place local approval for them under local boards of health.
The new language was submitted as an outside section of the state budget and originated in the Senate. It eliminates a previous 10-clinic cap on state Department of Public Health-sponsored needle-exchange programs and clarifies vague language that such clinics require “local approval” before opening. Instead, the new law now puts approval specifically in the hands of local health officials.
“It’s very exciting because it’s a health question,” Cheryl Zoll, CEO of Tapestry Health Inc. in Florence, said of the changes. “The governor has said this so many times himself, that it’s a public health issue.
“It’s critical because all across the state, communities are voting to bring needle-exchange clinics in,” Zoll said, referring to programs in the works in North Adams and Greenfield.
State Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow, who supported the legislation, said lifting the cap on needle-exchange programs will provide cities and towns with one more tool to fight the opioid epidemic in their communities.
“The big win and the really big policy change here is the cap is going to be lifted,” Lesser said from the Statehouse in Boston.
The changes have particular relevance to Tapestry, which operates needle-exchange programs in Northampton and Holyoke, and might run such a program if approved in Greenfield, where the board of health has recommended such a program to the Town Council. It’s unclear at present how Greenfield municipal leaders will proceed in the wake of the change.
Tapestry’s clinics are among six needle-exchange programs created in the wake of a 1993 state law, which authorized the Department of Public Health to permit up to 10 needle-exchange pilot programs in Massachusetts.
Advocates for Tapestry’s needle-exchange clinics say they provide a critical public health service amid an ongoing epidemic of addiction, particularly in Holyoke where more than 2,000 individual clients used the program on Main Street in the past year.