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BOSTON, Aug. 31, 2026…..Flanked by a sea of more than 20,000 purple flags representing lives lost to the opioid epidemic, Gov. Maura Healey invited dozens of people gathered around the display Monday to call out the names of loved ones who succumbed to fatal overdoses.
“Today these purple flags not only ask something of us, they demand something of us, especially those of us in government,” Healey said during an International Overdose Awareness Day ceremony on Boston Common. “They ask us to not look away. They ask us to keep fighting, and they ask us to do everything that we can so that this field, as poignant as it is, doesn’t grow any larger.”