By Rep. Paul Anderson
A conference committee been chosen to negotiate major differences in spending bills passed by the House and Senate. Supplemental budget legislation was passed in three separate House bills, while the Senate put all its spending into one bill. After targets are established so conferees know how much they can spend, negotiations will get serious and hopefully produce agreements that will allow for a transportation bill and also tax relief legislation. Only two weeks remain before adjournment, which is set by law for May 23.
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With the recent death of Minnesota icon, Prince, the topic of opioid medication has been in the news. We passed legislation last week in the House that dealt with tightening up regulations on patients getting prescriptions for the same pain medication from different doctors. We were given information on how the use of these drugs has increased over the years, and it’s startling. The amount of prescribed opioid medication sold in the United States has quadrupled between 1999 and 2011. In the past, opioids were prescribed mainly for severe post-surgical pain, but beginning in the 90s, doctors began prescribing them to treat chronic pain. That was after some medical experts claimed they could be used and not cause addiction.
Opioid death rates in Minnesota are highest in rural counties where it can be difficult to seek medical treatment as emergency responders are more spread out. The counties with the highest rates of death from opioid overdose between the years 1999 and 2014 are Anoka, Carlton, Cass, Hennepin, Mille Lacs, and St. Louis.
Another bill we worked on dealing with this topic had to do with allowing pharmacists to be authorized to prescribe a drug called “Nalozone” or “Narcan” under certain conditions. These drugs are what’s known as opiate antagonists and can counter the effects of an overdose, but they must be administered soon after the drugs have been ingested. Those who favored this legislation felt that, with time being of the essence, more lives could be saved by allowing druggists to dispense the medication without having a doctor’s prescription.
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Now that legislation clarifying last year’s buffer bill has been passed and signed by Gov. Mark Dayton, additional funding may be appropriate for those local units of government who agree to take on the duties of supervision and enforcement of the program. A group of ag legislators met last week to try and come up with a plan to make that funding available, either to the county SWCDs or the local watershed district. The amount being looked at is $10 million per year for several years, or until most of the buffer strips have been installed. The current timeline calls for them to be in place on public waters by next fall and on public ditches by the fall of 2018.
One of the spread sheets we looked at indicated the number of buffer miles in each county. In our district, Stearns has 1,523 miles, Douglas 1,205, and Pope County has 888 miles of what are called buffer miles. One problem with this indicator that includes all public waters is that the county with the most buffer miles is St. Louis, which has many streams and creeks but not much crop land. The number of buffer miles in that northern county is 9,414.
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As our weather warms up and more motorcycles are on the roads, this headline on the magazine cover of the organization, A.B.A.T.E., makes a good point. It says, “You see a biker; someone else sees a dad, mom, brother, or a child.” Be careful on the roads and watch for motorcycles.
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