AUGUSTA – The summer of 2022 was a pivotal one for state Sen. Brad Farrin. The Somerset County Republican from Norridgewock learned of tragic news that no parent could ever imagine. It would prove to be a defining moment for him that set him on a certain path to prevent what happened to him from ever happening to other parents.

The news he learned was his 26-year-old daughter, Haley, had died of a drug overdose. The culprit was cocaine laced with fentanyl.

In the 18 months since his daughter’s death, Farrin has been an advocate for greater penalties for those trafficking fentanyl and the prevention, education, treatment and recovery of substance use disorder. “This manufactured poison is killing a generation,” he said of fentanyl when he introduced LD 986 last year, which sought to reclassify trafficking of the synthetic opioid to a Class A felony.

“It became very apparent after we lost Haley and in talking with our grandson that drug education in our public school systems is really nonexistent. We started doing a little digging where we reached out to local superintendents and found out that there really isn’t a program.”

Sen. Brad Farrin, R-Somerset

Ultimately, the Maine Senate passed the bill but it failed to garner enough votes in the House. It died in June 2023 in non-concurrence between the chambers.

Since then, Farrin has introduced two new bills this session, both of which had public hearings on Wednesday. The first, LD 2089, was modeled after “Tucker’s Law” that was recently adopted in Texas and seeks to reinforce a Maine law passed in the 129th Legislature. That law, P.L. 2019 ch 196 (LD 773), requires teaching the effects of alcohol, narcotics and stimulants as part of health and physical education.

According to Farrin, the Maine Department of Education has concerns about LD 2089 since it may be too narrow by identifying fentanyl instead of the entire class of opioids. The Department also had concerns about who would provide the instruction and even mandating the instruction itself since curricula is often left to individual school districts. Still, he feels the state has a role to play since it provides more than half of all school funding.

“We met with Department of Education officials and they think we should broaden it a little bit. But what I heard was the unfunded mandate and local control. Well, if we’re paying 55% of the school’s bill, I think we probably ought to be able to require them to teach this,” he said. “If you look at who can provide the content, it could be community health organizations. We left it open so it doesn’t have to be a resource inside the school. I know some of our public health providers are geared to help provide this type of instruction; and we might be able to use funds from Maine’s Recovery Fund.”

The Maine Recovery Council administers the fund, which is the result of Maine’s involvement in the class-action National Opioids Settlement with opioid manufacturers and distributors. So far, the Council has distributed about $9 million of the $17 million in funds it has received thus far. In all, Maine will receive about $117 million from the settlement over the next 18 years.

If enacted, LD 2089 will also designate the third week of every October as Drug Poisoning Awareness Week.

Farrin’s other bill, LD 383, was heard by the Health and Human Services Committee later in the day. It is a resolve to study the adequacy and effectiveness of Maine’s substance use disorder treatment resources.

Senator Brad Farrin represents District 3 and is the Senate Republican Lead for the Transportation Committee.