Social workers across Massachusetts are on the front lines of the opioid epidemic. We work in treatment programs, community-based coalitions, sheriffs' departments, jails, drug courts, and hospitals. Every day we live with the newly released data on opioid and heroin deaths ( "Heroin, prescription drugs weigh heavily on Mass," Page A1, May 2) as our clients die.

These drastic numbers, unique across the country, cry out for new solutions. Our historic attempts to prevent and reduce substance use through harsh penal sanctions have failed.

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This just in: Overdose deaths in Massachusetts increased 7 percent last year. That figure is significant because the rise in deaths is slower than previous years, an indication that greater awareness and legislation are making a small dent in the epidemic. And the comprehensive opioid legislation signed by Governor Charlie Baker two months ago, including the first law in the nation establishing a seven-day supply limit on first-time opioid prescriptions, should help make a difference over time.

Still, there were nearly 1,400 lives lost statewide last year to opioid and heroin abuse, an unconscionable toll that shows there's more to be done. Policy makers must turn their focus to what happens to addicts after they detox or get treatment, a vulnerable population in dire need of community-based, sustainable pathways to recovery. Legislative action must address the real needs for additional services or the Commonwealth risks losing addicts in an overwhelmed provider network.

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Massachusetts voters are evenly divided over a proposed ballot question that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but they strongly support another proposed referendum that would allow more charter schools in the state, according to a new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll.

Voters also overwhelmingly back legislation that would protect transgender people from discrimination in malls, restaurants, and other public accommodations - and allow people to use the public restroom that matches their gender identity.

Even more popular was a proposed "millionaires' tax" that would raise rates on residents with annual incomes of $1 million or more. It garnered runaway support in the poll.

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BOSTON (AP) - Supporters of a November ballot question to legalize recreational marijuana have misled voters about its ramifications and the measure should be blocked, opponents say in a lawsuit filed with Massachusetts' highest court.

The suit, filed with the Supreme Judicial Court, claims the ballot question would allow for the sale of genetically modified forms of marijuana with THC concentrations of 60 percent or higher, the Bellotti Law Group says. It also alleges voters have not been told that high concentrations of THC could be added to food or beverages, such as candy, cookies or soda. Bellotti filed the complaint this week on behalf of 59 voters.

Under the proposal, Massachusetts residents 21 or older could possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana for recreational use.

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Marijuana shouldn't be more regulated than alcohol ("Legalization battle bound for state's highest court," April 29).

The states of Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Colorado have moved to end marijuana prohibition and legalize and regulate pot just as we do alcohol. After almost 50 years of enduring an incredibly harmful and ineffective war on marijuana, the people of these states have finally and rightly concluded that there is no rational or humane reason to criminalize and outlaw the purchase or sale of marijuana.

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The anti-marijuana legalization committee headed by Gov. Charlie Baker, Mayor Martin J. Walsh and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo is publicly urging legalization backers to come clean about the high potency of the drugs the measure would legalize - and acknowledge that the marijuana industry depends on these high-octane pot products to make a profit.

The Campaign for a Safe and Healthy Massachusetts cites claims in a legal challenge - currently pending before the state's highest court - - alleging that the marijuana legalization ballot measure is based on misleading information about the potency of the drugs it would legalize.

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The former drug-addicted chemist who got high at work nearly every day for eight years handled more than 500 cases in Suffolk County alone - and up to 1,500 total were processed at the Amherst lab during her time there - according to officials sorting through the fallout of the state's latest drug lab scandal.

The case count in Suffolk likely represents only a fraction of those district attorneys across the state are now scrambling to identify in the wake of a damning attorney general's report on the misconduct of ex-chemist Sonja Farak.

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A state chemist at an Amherst drug lab got high on methamphetamines or other drugs almost every day at work for nearly eight years, consumed the lab's own supply of drugs, and cooked crack cocaine in the lab after hours - actions that jeopardize an untold number of cases - according to an investigative report released Tuesday.

Investigators for the attorney general's office found that chemist Sonja Farak had tested drug samples or testified in court between about 2005 and 2013 while under the influence of meth, ketamine, cocaine, LSD, and other drugs, according to the report, much of which is based on Farak's own grand jury testimony. She even smoked crack before a 2012 interview with State Police officials inspecting the lab for accreditation purposes, she testified.

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One delivery service offers gluten-free marijuana brownies. Another promises a free marijuana-laced lollipop with each order. A third touts trained "caregivers" and delivery until 4 a.m.

These marijuana delivery services - the objects of an unsuccessful crackdown by Massachusetts health officials two years ago - were expected to fade away once the first state-sanctioned medical marijuana dispensaries opened last year. Instead, they have proliferated.

More than two dozen of these Internet-based services are now openly advertising long menus of marijuana strains and edibles, plus prices and user reviews, the Globe found.

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More than half the people who died last year from opioid overdoses had the powerful drug fentanyl in their blood, according to data released Monday by the state Department of Public Health.

The department's quarterly report on overdoses included information about fentanyl for the first time, confirming reports from law enforcement that the synthetic opioid - more powerful than morphine or heroin - may be playing a major role in the overdose epidemic. Dealers are believed to be lacing heroin with fentanyl, making it even more deadly.

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The Massachusetts heroin epidemic is unlike any other in the United States. The overdose rate in the state is more than twice the national average. And deaths from prescription opioids like OxyContin are only slightly less harrowing.

Unusual, too, is the degree to which these two scourges are feeding off each other. A substantial and spiking number of overdoses in Massachusetts involves both heroin and prescription drugs, something you rarely find elsewhere in the United States.

Until now, it's been hard to see how, exactly, heroin and prescription opioids were interacting, since almost all available data lump them together under the heading of "opioids." But a Globe examination of the information in death certificates from 1999 to 2014 reveals the increasingly toxic interplay between the drugs, both at the state level and in individual counties.

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WASHINGTON - The battle over legalizing recreational marijuana in Massachusetts will land before the state's highest court in June - when opponents will argue that the petition to put it on the ballot was misleading.

Challengers to the proposed November state ballot question will ask the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court to throw out the more than 100,000 signatures collected to certify the ballot measure.

"The voters who signed the petition to put the measure on the ballot weren't told what the legislation would do," said John Scheft, an attorney representing a group of registered voters who filed a complaint last week challenging the measure.

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The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, saying it is worried legalizing marijuana for adults will make it easier for kids to gain access to the drug, came out Wednesday against a likely ballot question to make marijuana legal for recreational use.

"As superintendents, our primary focus is on helping each and every student reach their full potential, and we believe the commercial legalization of marijuana runs directly counter to that goal," the executive director of the association, Tom Scott, said in a statement. "Where marijuana is legal, we see increased use and abuse by young people."

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It has become a grim workplace routine: the "code blue" crackling over the loudspeaker. The all-hands-on-deck emergency response. Then, in more than half the calls, the discovery of a nonresponsive person - - blue lips, shallow breathing, and constricted pupils, all telltale signs of a drug overdose.

"It's happening everywhere," said Dr. Jessie Gaeta, chief medical officer at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, headquartered in the South End neighborhood infamously nicknamed Methadone Mile.

"People literally slump over in the waiting room. . . . At the pharmacy window, in the lobby, in the dental clinic, in the respite clinic," she said. "Everywhere."

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When I think about the prospect of legalizing marijuana in Massachusetts, I surprise myself by sounding like my father. Cannabis tourism? THC-infused lip balm? "Budz and sudz" crawls? What is the world coming to?

The combination of vice and capitalism is a powerful one, so it might be expected that entrepreneurs are rushing to market these artisanal highs. In Colorado, one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, cannabis concierge services are thriving, from ganja yoga retreats to weed weddings. Sales nearly hit $1 billion last year, with the state raking in tax and licensing fees of $135 million.

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Norwood Police Chief William G. Brooks III says he thinks welcoming a medical marijuana dispensary to his town is a mistake, and if Norwood's selectmen choose to do it, he does not want any revenue from the operation to go to his department.

"If the town does sign a host agreement and receive revenue from the marijuana industry, I respectfully request that the Norwood Police Department not receive a share. I could not in good conscience accept it," Brooks wrote to the Board of Selectmen recently.

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I have worked for more than 40 years as a psychotherapist with several thousand teens and adults confronting a variety of personal, marital, and family challenges. I find the argument raised by those who oppose legalizing marijuana for adults - that it would "put our children at risk" - to be confusing and shortsighted ("Key players join forces against marijuana," Metro, April 14).

When kids want alcohol, they usually find some willing adult to buy it for them from a local liquor store. If teens want to use marijuana, on the other hand, that moves them toward somebody who has access to a wider range of more dangerous drugs. If it were legalized, I assume most kids would obtain it as they now get alcohol, and their contact with more dangerous drugs would be potentially limited.

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Governor Charlie Baker, Mayor Martin Walsh, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo aligning against the ballot initiative to legalize marijuana ("KEY players join forces against marijuana") is another instance of politicians refusing, to the bitter end, to acknowledge the utter failure of criminal regulation. Their arguments are absurd and hypocritical.

Legalization will not increase teens' access to marijuana, since right now any child can readily obtain the product on the illegal market - a market regulated by gangsters. Marijuana has nothing to do with the opioid epidemic.

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Dr. Kevin P. Hill's April 15 opinion piece, "Getting marijuana policy right," stated that, in his opinion, "no one with any ties to pro-or antimarijuana groups should serve on the Cannabis Control Commission."

In reality, such commissions are usually filled either with retired politicians or with people with business connections to the industry being regulated. Almost every politician since the 1930s, at least in the two main parties, has been OK with marijuana prohibition. Many were fanatically anti-marijuana, and the others were at least content with acquiescing to the status quo.

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I'm not sure where all the hand-wringing is coming from regarding the proposed ballot question to legalize recreational use of marijuana.

If the question does pass, I expect a similar reaction in the Legislature to that of November 1998. Remember Question 2? The Clean Elections Law was ignored by the Legislature because lawmakers didn't like it, and was quietly killed just a few years later.

I expect the same with the marijuana question.

Brian Mehigan

Stow

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