Lia Russell // Bangor Daily News

Maine health care providers have issued steadily fewer opioid prescriptions for about a decade, yet the state still had the highest opioid prescription rate in New England in 2020, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The steady fall shows the progress the state has made in dispensing fewer of the opioids that powered an addiction epidemic that has killed thousands of Mainers, as well as the effects of a 2016 state law that restricted opioid prescriptions. Maine’s opioid prescription rate has been lower than the nation’s as a whole since 2017.