In half of all cases in Maine in which a child is removed from the home, an Office of Child and Family Services investigation identified the parent or caregiver’s substance use a risk factor.

Recovery advocates want to see a move toward trauma-informed recovery and state officials and lawmakers are looking at how the child welfare system is uniquely positioned to help.

Maine lawmakers and health officials realized easy access to prescription opioids was creating dependency issues and clamped down, but did not anticipate how well the illegal drug market would fill the void.

Nikole Powell’s father developed an opioid use disorder after a work injury, a dependence that traumatized his family and eventually led to his incarceration and death. His daughter is trying to break the cycle.

Like many patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain, Todd Papianou, a high school teacher from Rumford, knows the thin line between life-saving and life-destroying medication.

The Sun Journal analyzed annual confirmed drug death counts, from 1997 through September 2021, using data from drug death reports.

The Sun Journal analyzed data from Maine’s Prescription Monitoring Program from 2016 to 2021; and data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System from 2006 to 2014.

Twenty years after Purdue Pharma introduced its pain medication, OxyContin, Maine lawmakers passed a bill that significantly stemmed the flow of pain pills into the state. A Sun Journal investigation found the new restrictions may have been too little, too late: A generation of Mainers were already grappling with substance use disorder and a growing illicit drug trade was ready to meet the demand.

METHODOLOGY The Sun Journal analyzed data from the Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention of suspected fatal and nonfatal overdoses in emergency departments, from 2017 to 2021. The data is publicly available on the Maine CDC’s website