NORTHAMPTON — The ground rules for opening needle-exchange programs changed Monday after 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. The Florence-based agency has been embroiled in a court battle with the Holyoke City Council over its needle-exchange program there.
When Tapestry opened that clinic in 2012, it received unanimous approval from the city’s board of health and support from the mayor and police chief, but the City Council was not involved. That also was the case in Northampton when a needle-exchange clinic opened there 17 years earlier.
The Holyoke city councilors who brought the legal complaint contend that the “local approval” language in the previous law includes the city’s legislative body. In addition to Tapestry, Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse and city health officials are also named as defendants in the case.
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.
Tapestry cut ties with the Department of Public Health as of July 1 in an attempt to keep its needle-exchange clinic operating in Holyoke after Hampden Superior Court Judge Mark Mason in March ordered that it stop distributing syringes and needles there within 120 days because, as a state-sponsored program, it did not receive proper approval from the City Council.
Northampton lawyer William C. Newman, director of the western regional office of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, who helped represent Tapestry in the case, said the lawsuit is now about a statute that “doesn’t exist anymore,” and that the Holyoke clinic “will continue to do its life-saving work.”
“I personally don’t see the need for any more litigation,” Newman said. “This is a victory on the front lines for everyone who is fighting the opioid epidemic across the state.”
However, Holyoke City Council President Kevin A. Jourdain, a plaintiff in the case, in a statement emailed to the Gazette Tuesday evening, said “the courts have proven what Tapestry and Mayor Morse did in 2012 was illegal.”
Jourdain said he would continue efforts to have Mason’s order enforced.
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.
State Rep. Aaron Vega, D-Holyoke, said giving boards of health authority to approve needle-exchange programs is “a positive move.”
“There’s at least three or four other cities in western Mass. looking at needle-exchange programs,” said Vega, who has supported Tapestry’s programs. “Especially with this kind of issue, it tends to take some of the politics out of it.”
Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.