SPRINGFIELD — Flanked by a sea of more than 20,000 purple flags representing lives lost to the opioid epidemic, Gov. Maura Healey invited dozens of people gathered around the display Monday to call out the names of loved ones who succumbed to fatal overdoses.
“Today these purple flags not only ask something of us, they demand something of us, especially those of us in government,” Healey said during an International Overdose Awareness Day ceremony on Boston Common. “They ask us to not look away. They ask us to keep fighting, and they ask us to do everything that we can so that this field, as poignant as it is, doesn’t grow any larger.”
The fluttering emblems, some emblazoned with people’s names, capture overdose fatalities in the commonwealth from 2013 through 2025. There were 978 confirmed and estimated overdose deaths last year, the first time in more than a decade that fatalities dropped below 1,000.
Overdose deaths hit a “devastating peak” of more than 2,300 in 2022, Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein said. For three consecutive years, the number of deaths has declined, which Goldstein attributed to investments in treatment and recovery, plus harm reduction efforts such as making naloxone and fentanyl test strips available to Bay Staters.
“We know, and we see firsthand, progress is possible,” Goldstein said. “We can prevent overdose deaths. What we are doing together is building a commonwealth where people struggling with substance use are met with dignity, compassion, treatment, recovery, support and the opportunity to live — to live well, to live safely and to live fully.”
Rep. Kate Donaghue, whose son died from an overdose eight years ago, recalled his struggles to find a treatment program that was covered by his insurance as he became addicted to prescription medications and heroin.
“He was thrown out of programs for drinking and smoking. Why do we punish people for showing the symptoms of the disease?” Donaghue said. “What if we had more beds and better quality treatment? What if an overdose prevention center had been available? What if our prisons and jails were not our largest treatment providers?”
A 2024 substance use and addiction law required that insurers cover opioid overdose reversal drugs, established licensure for recovery coaches, and installed civil and criminal liability protections around the use of fentanyl test strips. A legislative conference committee dropped a controversial Senate provision that would have legalized overdose prevention centers, where people could use illegal drugs under the supervision of trained healthcare workers.
This session, bills (H 5274 / S 1393) to legalize overdose prevention centers have stalled in the House and Senate Ways and Means committees.
Goldstein, asked whether health officials are missing any harm reduction tools from the Legislature, acknowledged DPH supports overdose prevention centers “because we see them as an evidence-based way to prevent more overdoses here in Massachusetts.”
“But you know, the Legislature has been a great partner in this work and has appropriated a lot of money to the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services, which has allowed us to purchase a lot of naloxone and get that out on the streets,” Goldstein told the News Service. “It’s allowed us to build housing units all across Massachusetts – have low-threshold housing available to people. We know ‘Housing First’ as a strategy works.”
The Biden administration’s plan to end homelessness involved a “Housing First” approach, which viewed housing as an immediate solution before connecting people to more resources to stay housed, such as healthcare, job training, and legal and education assistance, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. The Trump administration says it is moving away from those “failed” policies and embracing a “Treatment First” strategy that “pairs safe housing with services that address addiction and serious mental illness, rather than treating housing alone as the solution.”
“We cannot solve homelessness by funding systems that perpetuate it,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. said earlier this month. “We will fund programs that get people off the streets, into treatment and recovery, and back to self-sufficiency.”
To bolster harm reduction efforts in Massachusetts, Health and Human Services Secretary Kiame Mahaniah said he’d like to see heightened federal investment in areas beyond healthcare, like job placements and specialized supportive housing.
“I would say that’s probably my biggest wish list — is just (the) ability to have some of these efforts federally funded to just do the extra work,” Mahaniah told the News Service. He added, “The only way to really have the amount of money that I’m thinking of is if we had a federal partner that believed in it.”
Healey told attendees she feels the “visceral anger,” as well as “overwhelming” pain and sadness, that they carry while grieving family and community members lost to the opioid epidemic. She also became choked up while speaking about people who have made it into recovery.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am to get to shake your hand, to get to touch you,” the governor said.
Healey, who wore a purple ribbon, crouched alongside First Lady Joanna Lydgate to plant additional flags on Boston Common. As attorney general, Healey sued Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family for their role in fueling the opioid crisis, which led to a $4.3 billion settlement for prevention, treatment and recovery efforts.
“Joanna was actually the one responsible for putting the case together over the course of several years, working with investigators and attorneys in our office,” Healey said. “And together we fought for accountability. I want to be clear: It wasn’t justice. The Sacklers deserve to be in jail.”
A July 2021 press release from AG Healey’s office listed former Chief Deputy Lydgate among a team of officials in the attorney general’s office who worked on the case.