Q&A With Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, Chair Of State’s Task Force On Heroin, Opioid Abuse

BERLIN — In February of 2015, just months after being elected to office, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued an executive order to create the Heroin and Opioid Emergency Task Force. That task force was chaired by Lt. Governor Boyd Rutherford, and after months of research and deliberation with health officials, law enforcement and experts across the state, Rutherford’s taskforce released the Interim report on heroin in August of 2015.

In the opening lines of that report, Rutherford said that he and Hogan heard countless tales on the campaign trail of the spread of heroin and opioid addiction and how it was wreaking havoc on the state’s communities.

The interim report recommends a multi-prong approach with 10 funding announcements with seven allocations to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene aimed at improving access for treatment and rehabilitation and three significant grants to the Governor’s Office of Crime, Control and Prevention to support law enforcement efforts, including $124,635 to fund license plate reader technology at the north end of Ocean City (it’s already in place at the Routes 50 and 90 entrances to town).

Since the report’s release, Hogan and Rutherford have continued to keep the battle against opioid addiction as a high priority, and Rutherford spoke with The Dispatch this week in a phone interview about what he calls the state’s holistic approach to heroin addiction.

More