Maine's Opioid Crisis Continues to Worsen Amid Pandemic

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine's attorney general says Maine’s drug overdose crisis has worsened during the pandemic, largely because of the opioid epidemic.

Attorney General Aaron Frey says a report compiled by Marcella Sorg of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center showed that drugs caused 132 deaths in the second quarter of 2020.

That’s a 4% increase from the first quarter of the year.

Drug overdose deaths have also totaled 258 in the first two quarters of the year, and that’s a 27% increase from the last two quarters of 2019.