John Nutting

Things like this just make the hair stand up still in the back of my neck, that unnecessary.

If you were suffering that bad with a disorder of your stomach or your bones or your skin, bang, you know, let's get that person help.

And this here, somebody has to beg for help, they still don't receive it.

And so we've made a presentation in Maine to all the district attorneys have made about what the law is and how it can be used more effectively and used more than it has been in the past.

And that, I believe, will bring about some positive change going forward because it's better for them to step in early in somebody's history

especially if they've been in a hospital previous, get them the help they need or may not realize they need, but get them help before something bad happens that costs society millions and millions of dollars.

Yes.

raising people's awareness that this is a biological disease of the brain.

It is no different than any other disease of any other body part.

Your chemical levels are not normal.

More often than not, you're born in the dead of the winter and nobody knows why.

Open discussions with family members and

school officials early on and medical professionals, even your primary care physicians helping to direct them towards being on a treatment plan.

We in Maine now have over 75 people that are in their early teens

Many of them are not on the treatment plan.

We're paying untold millions to keep them in facilities outside the state of Maine because we don't have any facilities for young people in Maine.

If that's money, we should be keeping them in Maine, having more community supports to prevent things from happening, not just reacting to them afterwards.

The folks, the very hardworking folks that always in Maine have opposed this type of legislation, I think by now have realized that John Nutting is not going to back off.

And we're gaining numbers of parents and caregivers almost on a daily basis, growing our network of parents and caregivers and law enforcement that want to do better in this regard.

Well, look, thanks so much for having me on.