Jim Leddy is a Vermont State Senator (elected in 1998) who has championed drug reform legislation over the last several years. He has chaired the Joint Committee on Healthcare Access and is a current member of the Corrections Oversight Committee. Vermont has a total population of about 620,000 residents.

Q: How many drug addicts are in Vermont?

It depends on how you define addict. I can give you a picture of the problem in this way: five years ago there were about 100 people that sought treatment in Vermont for heroin-related problems, this past year that number was 1200. So we had a 1200% increase in five years in the number of Vermonters seeking help for heroin addiction.

I think Vermont is serious about getting a more comprehensive and effective approach to drug treatment, but we don’t have it lined up yet. We are still very much in a reactive mode.

Q: Tell me a little bit about some of the bills you have worked on in the past.

The first issue I dealt with was needle exchange, and we passed that unanimously 5 years ago.

The next issue was methadone, and that passed four years ago after we had a study commission that studied the issue of pharmacological treatment for addiction. We had world class experts testify. We had an epidemic of heroin at the time- affecting more and more people who were more and more willing to be public about their need for treatment.

The Senate passed the methadone bill 26-4 over the opposition of Governor Dean while he was threatening to veto. When you pass 26-4 though, that’s veto proof.

The House was supportive of the legislation, but not by the same margin as the Senate. So since I wasn’t sure that the House would pass with enough to be veto-proof, I made some changes which perhaps had to be made. It was watered-down, for instance it required that the only providers could be hospitals. Even today we only have one hospital in Vermont that has been willing. So we had a game but no players. A lot of that was because of the governor’s opposition.

“We can’t build our way out, with jails and jails and jails... I think we are slowly recognizing that a punitive, law enforcement approach of sanctions has failed. It fails.”

Other issues I have dealt with include medical marijuana and that was a long fight. David Zuckerman in the House of Representatives deserves a lot of credit, but if the Senate hadn’t this year pushed very aggressively it wouldn’t have happened.

David did some good work. Three years ago, on a floor amendment, which was highly unusual, he got the majority of the house to support medical marijuana. The problem that year was the Democratic leadership of the Senate- the leadership of the Senate bottled it up that year. It was not a good piece of legislation- which is hard to do when you are on the run- it came to the floor without any review at all. But the fact that it could be passed on the floor without ever being considered as a bill showed that Vermonters were ready. This year we decided to take the lead, and it went through my committee and the medical marijuana bill passed 22-7 in 2003. So it was a 3-1 margin.

We were under pressure from the White House, from the White House Drug Policy Office telling us this was a “slippery slope” and it’s funny, I received correspondence from the White House even after it passed.

The pressure from within the committee started to build up. Tom Koch was the chair of the House Committee. Koch wasn’t going to touch it with a ten foot poll. But there was a referendum and it passed with 80% of the vote.

The bottom line is that the House Committee was moving so slowly. So I added on an amendment to an existing bill for advanced directives, a long term care bill and pain management bill.

The House got an amendment from Zuckerman, not for medical marijuana, but for a committee to study the medical marijuana issue. And that opened a window for me to add on an amendment- because it was then “germane” to the underlying bill. We set it up that way, to create that window of opportunity.

Q: Why didn’t Dean support medical marijuana?

You would have to ask Dean about that. His public statements were to the effect that it had not been through any scientific protocols, that it had no FDA backing, no evidence that when used in a medical way that it had any medical benefit.

I went to the Middle East and was not present for the last few days of the bill. A compromise was reached, some of which I didn’t care for, but it allowed it to come into being. The governor didn’t sign it, but he let it become law.

This past session the Senate passed 27-3 a bill that broadened the methadone law, and cleaned up some restrictions on the current laws.

The law we passed in 2000 had a sunset provision, so that we could research, evaluate and decide what we wanted to do. The law would go away unless in an active way we decided to renew it.

We had passed a really good bill in the Senate that allowed entities other than hospitals to run methadone programs, it allowed take homes, allowed those in the criminal justice system who were addicted to continue their treatment and medication. We built in an overdose prevention intervention program to train rescue folks and emergency room workers how to recognize and treat overdoses.

This past year we had over 80 Vermonters die from overdoses, 20% more than died from highway road accidents.

But because the House never acted on it, the enabling legislation sunsetted. At this point, there is no bill that addresses pharmacological treatment, so we fall back to the federal guidelines. It was never intended to be the outcome. We wanted to amend the legislation and give greater flexibility. But by letting the law die, we reverted to the federal system. But the governor, like Dean could decide not to intervene and thus not allow treatment.

Q: Why didn’t the House act?

I have no idea- that’s a mystery to me.

Although I was a sponsor, the Republican administration of Gov Douglass was a strong supporter, and we worked together on it, we still couldn’t get the Republican-controlled house to take it up.

Q: How have your constituents responded to your work on these bills?

I represent all of Burlington as well as 16 other towns in Chittenden County.

I have never had anybody that I can recall criticize me or act against me for my advocacy to provide drug treatment. I have had people not agree with me on the issues, but I have had no party or organization in any way speak out against me, or work against me. The fact is that in most instances I have far more information and experience and I was out there every day trying to get treatment with people who were struggling with heroin, with life and death everyday.

I ran the largest drug treatment program in the state of Vermont for 20 years- I dealt with a lot of people. The biggest challenge was one of education not political opposition.

Q: Is Vermont unique in that point?

We have not been successful in getting the majority of communities in this state to step up and recognize the size of the problem- the fact that we just have one program in the state of Vermont is great for Burlington, but an embarrassment and denial for many other areas of the state.

There’s been an absence of political leadership in this state locally and at the state level to buck the trend, take on the issue, and fight to get things going locally.

There has only been one political leader who has stepped up and tried to make things happen- Peter Quivel, mayor of Burlington and Democratic nominee for Governor of Vermont. He spoke out so that his community could become the first and only with a methadone program in Vermont.

Governor Douglas, while being outwardly supportive that this kind of treatment needs to be made available has done little to make it happen- he has mostly used a laissez-faire approach. There is a line you need to understand that is drawn- you can’t force the community to do anything, but you have to provide leadership, and that hasn’t happened.

Q: How would you describe the political culture of Vermont?

Vermont is a tolerant state. You don’t get a broad brush knee jerk reaction to a lot of things that fall into convenient stereotypes. My opinion though frankly is that we are quite uneducated as to the extent of the problem and the best ways to treat it. When you operate with a lack of education and ignorance- and I don’t say that critically- and a lack of leadership- you leave the political decision makers left to make decisions they don’t know how to make and no compelling reason to make them since there is no leadership.

I frankly, fault the treatment community for not coming forward. I told them, “You people, who are most knowledgeable about the need have been the most silent.” And I said I understood their dilemma, but how do you expect the people you serve to get the help they need? If you aren’t there fighting for them, whose going to fight for them?

Q: Why is this issue important for Vermonters who don’t have addictions? Why should they devote tax money to this?

Well, we aren’t spending as much as we need to.

Not treating the problem is far more expensive than treating it; from jail to lost life and opportunity, to services, children in the custody of the state.... Our jails are overflowing with people from drug related crimes. We have too many people in jail for too much time.

When we look at the more ancillary fall outs from drug abuse people say, “Hey this doesn’t make any sense!” We can’t build our way out, with jails and jails and jails... I think we are slowly recognizing that a punitive, law enforcement approach of sanctions has failed. It fails. We are not only losing lives, but we are absolutely wasting money.

Q: Has the prison lobby had a loud voice in Vermont?

Corrections Corporation of America [Stock symbol CXW]- Vermont sends prisoners out of state- but only in the last year have we contracted with a for-profit prisons corporation. Before we were with New Jersey and Virginia for some years. We no longer contract with Virginia. The largest prison for Vermont now is in Kentucky for 400 prisoners, started just about a year ago that we sent people there through the Corrections Corporation of America.

Q: Is there a take home message for people reading this that is applicable in their states?

I don’t think it’s from Vermont. I think the take home message is, “What’s going on in their own backyard- what are they doing with the problems in their own community- what is the nature of the problem, what are they doing now?” Are they prepared to fight it or are they just going to roll over and address it with the War on Drugs approach and try to fight it by building more jails. I would not offer us as a model- we aren’t doing that much, we aren’t doing what we need to. Our jails are a failure- too many people, and they stay longer than they need to. And we are not doing anything to help them return to the community. And the sad thing is that I don’t think there is a model. If we are a state that is out ahead- then be scared of those who are behind us.

I recently formed a coalition around healthcare. It is a coalition with major business groups- the Vermont Business Round Table- a coalition of 21 different organizations and associations, from major businesses in the state to the state labor group – AFLCIO- to the teachers’ union to the ecumenical society to hospitals- all of these groups- Coalition 21- whose goal is to essentially take on the healthcare crisis and develop transformation changes in how health care is delivered and how it is paid for.

To participate the organizations have to agree to four principles:

1: Our healthcare system is broken and we are in a crisis

2: Every Vermonter is entitled to insurance- so universal coverage

3: All these diverse interest groups have to come to the table and be willing to learn and listen to others

4: They have to help pay for the staffing of the commission- we have hired a foundation to work with us.

This is the first time nationally that such a broad coalition has been founded to deal with health care.

Q: How did the implementation of needle exchange programs affect the state?

From a legislative stand point it was very straight forward and simple- the bill passed 30-0. It was harm reduction. It was interesting- we are not providing treatment that works- methadone- but we would give free needles to continue to use drugs- that was a contradiction that was just mind boggling. The fact that you could say that one of the largest causes of a whole host of diseases was needle sharing and that we could prevent infections, it was very easy. We are trying to create an environment where drug addicts won’t do harm to others- to “innocents.” People have had no problems with it.