In recent years, heroin and opiate use in Maine and nationwide has reached epidemic proportions, according to experts.

Nationally, since 2007, there has been a 150 percent rise in heroin use, according to Biddeford Police Department Sgt. Steve Gorton, who talked about the issue at the Biddeford City Council meeting Tuesday, as reported in Thursday’s Journal Tribune.

That increase in use has led to drug overdoses and even deaths. Statewide, Gorton said, deaths from heroin overdoses have risen from seven in 2011 to 57 in 2014 – a whopping 714 percent increase in just a few years.

This is disturbing news that should have everyone in the state worried.

And statistics for Biddeford are also alarming. Biddeford Fire Department First responders have administered Narcan – a drug that can prove life saving for those who have overdosed on heroin – 30 times in 2013. That number rose to 55 in 2014 and by Sept. 29 of this year, with only two-thirds of the year over, the number has reached 57.

Thankfully, this crisis has sparked concern with both state and local leaders and both groups are moving into action.

As reported in Friday’s Journal Tribune, the Anti-Heroin Opiate Initiative was announced Thursday by U.S. Attorney for Maine Thomas E. Delahanty II, Maine Attorney General Janet Mills and Maine Public Safety Commissioner John Morris.

The initiative will take a threepronged approach with three separate working groups: one to tackle treatment, another dealing with prevention and harm reduction and the third will examine the role of law enforcement.

Public Safety Commissioner Morris seems to have a good approach on that third prong. Too often, drug users are targeted and imprisoned, but at Thursday’s press conference in Portland, Morris said that law enforcement won’t be looking to arrest heroin users but will instead focus on finding and arresting the dealers who are “coming up here to Maine to make a profit.”

That seems the proper role of law enforcement to us.

As Executive Vice President of the Maine Medical Association Gordon Smith said Thursday, “Substance abuse disease is a chronic illness and needs to be treated as a chronic illness.”

He said those who have this illness will relapse and deal with their addiction throughout their lives.

Adding to the problem, said Smith, who is one of the directors of the initiative, is the lack of treatment resources.

BPD Sgt. Gorton said he also sees the lack of treatment options as the biggest hurdle in battling addiction.

He told the City Council that experience has shown that if services are not immediately available for someone who asks for help, the window of opportunity to provide that help is gone.

In an effort to fill the gap, BPD is working with Southern Maine Health Care to provide treatment programs, an effort we applaud.

Other local efforts to address heroin abuse include a committee that was formed about a year ago by Biddeford Mayor Alan Casavant and UNE neuroscientist Dr. Ed Bilsky, as well as additional opportunities for community members to get involved.

On Tuesday from 3-5 p.m. at Sanford City Hall, the York County Opiates Task Force will convene a community conversation.

Another community conversation on drug abuse will be held on Nov. 7 at 4 p.m. at the Second Congregational Church in Biddeford.

It is heartening to see both the state and local communities working on this important issue. Hopefully partisan politics won’t hinder the positive work that can happen when multiple groups put their heads together to solve a problem.