Christie cancels address at Boston opioid conference, citing flight delays

Gov. Chris Christie was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the International Conference on Opioids at Harvard Medical School on Monday afternoon, but he was forced to cancel his appearance due to delays and cancellations of flights into Boston, his office said.

Delays at Boston’s Logan Airport have reportedly been on the rise in recent weeks as crews there resurface one of the main runways.

“The governor sends his regrets to the conference organizers, its attendees and to everyone joining in the fight to resolve this nation's opioid addiction crisis,” Brian Murray, a Christie spokesman, said in a statement.

The three-day International Conference on Opioids, now in its sixth year, features presentations by top researchers intended to help doctors identify opioid misuse by their patients and decrease the overall distribution of opioid painkillers.

Christie was expected to talk about actions his administration has taken to address opioid drug abuse in New Jersey, which he declared a public health crisis at the beginning of the year. He signed an executive order granting him additional resources to battle the epidemic.

Christie was also tapped by Trump earlier this year to lead a national opioid addiction commission.

During an event hosted by the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey at Morristown Medical Center earlier Monday, Christie said his focus as part of that commission will be to put more emphasis on treatment, as opposed to interdiction or education, as a way to deal with opioid drug abuse.

“I think as a country over the last 30 years or so, on that three-legged stool we’ve made the leg of treatment by far the shortest leg,” Christie said.

Christie has also been central to other policy changes in recent weeks.

Last week, he announced that five additional states — Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and West Virginia — are now sharing information with the New Jersey Prescription Monitoring Program, increasing the number of states exchanging data with New Jersey to 12.

And earlier this year, the Legislature passed and Christie signed toughest-in-the-nation limits on initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com