MINI-TRUMP

Maine Gov Caught in ‘Lie’ About Student’s Heroin OD

Has peddled false anecdote to back his policies.

Despite Maine's Gov. Paul LePage—or "Mini-Trump," as we've described him—repeatedly peddling a story about a Deering High School student's heroin overdose, to support his vetoing access to a lifesaving overdose medication, the school says the tale is flat-out "not true." The governor has long claimed that opioid antagonist “Naloxone does not truly save lives; it merely extends them until the next overdose,” and would cite anecdotal evidence of a student receiving three shots of the medication in one week. “It’s not true. It’s absolutely not true,” Deering High School principal Ira Waltz told the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, however, according to the Huffington Post. “We don’t even possess the medication in the building. And I checked with the school nurse and the school-based health center, and we have no access to that medication. And so, if there was an overdose at Deering, we would have called 911. That would have been our intervention.” LePage, for his part, insisted the story was true, and claimed a local police chief was in the room to hear the story. That chief, Michael Sauschuck, also said Tuesday that LePage's story was false.