A few weeks ago Lowell Mayor Dan Rourke addressed an open letter to New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte on this newspaper’s Opinion page in response to her tweet warning drug dealers from Lawrence and Lowell that law enforcement in her state “will find you, stop you, and lock you up.”

While rightly pointing out that the Granite State, specifically the city of Manchester, should get its own drug-trafficking house in order before casting aspersions on two Massachusetts Gateway Cities on its border, Rourke suggested that rather than casting blame, the two states should work together to combat this ongoing opioid scourge.

Rourke wrote: “Regional collaboration, shared resources, and compassionate policies are the only ways we can truly address this crisis. Scapegoating neighboring cities like Lowell and Lawrence does nothing to move us forward.”

Lowell’s mayor should be congratulated for his role in beginning a constructive — rather than accusatory — conversation on this sensitive topic.

In fact, it might have moved his downriver counterpart, Lawrence Mayor Brian DePeña, to take the next step in forming a potential interstate anti-drug partnership.

On Monday, Mayor DePeña stood with Gov. Ayotte at the New Hampshire State House in Concord, where they agreed there’s much more the two states can do to combat the epidemic of opioid overdoses.

“I am thankful for Mayor DePeña’s willingness to address the dangerous flow of drugs and criminal activity occurring between Lawrence and our state. The more we work together, the safer all our communities will be,” Ayotte said.

According to the governor, the new partnership, initiated at DePeña’s request, will include funding in New Hampshire’s upcoming budget to boost cooperation between local law enforcement along the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border and Lawrence.

“This is the mayor of Lawrence and the governor of New Hampshire so far, but this is the beginning, and I think this could be a model. I appreciate the mayor having the foresight to think of this model and to reach out,” Ayotte said.

This encounter represents a dramatic turnaround for the governor, who based her campaign for that office on the promise of protecting New Hampshire from becoming another Massachusetts, while attempting to lure Bay State businesses over the border at the same time.

The governor acknowledged that she campaigned against Bay State policies and expressed concern specifically about drugs entering New Hampshire from Lawrence, but she said Monday that meeting with DePeña represented a “new chapter in tackling these issues.”

DePeña said that fentanyl and other drugs, human trafficking, and gang violence “recognize no borders and spare no community,” necessitating his cross-border outreach to Ayotte. The mayor expressed his thanks to the governor for “her commitment to working in partnership with the City of Lawrence to confront this urgent crisis.”

“The time for decisive, extraordinary action is now, but no single entity can combat this alone,” DePeña said.

These grim statistics prove his point.

Since 2016, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids became the leading cause of overdose deaths in the U.S. Of the about 100,000 Americans who die annually due to an overdose, the National Institutes for Health reports that “75% of those deaths involve opioids.”

According to the New Hampshire Drug Monitoring Initiative, in 2023 — the most recent year of complete statistics — New Hampshire recorded 480 drug overdose deaths, with the vast majority (385) involving opioids.

That overall total compares to 486 fatalities in 2022, with again opioids (427) being the major contributing cause.

Massachusetts recorded 2,125 confirmed and estimated opioid related deaths in 2023, 232 fewer than 2022’s total.

Preliminary data from 2024 show a continued decline in fatal opioid-related deaths.

Ayotte said the growing prevalence of the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine in street drugs factored into her willingness to partner with a cross-border city.

Just like fentanyl, xylazine, also known as tranq, is often combined with other illicit substances without the user’s knowledge. And because it’s not an opioid, its presence can cause normal overdose treatments to fail, Ayotte said.

“Xylazine, when it’s mixed with fentanyl, Narcan is not effective with it,” said Ayotte, the state’s former attorney general.

According to NIH, “xylazine can slow breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure to dangerously low levels. Overdose reversal medications do not reverse the effects of xylazine,” and repeated use of the drug “is associated with skin wounds, such as open sores (ulcers) and abscesses.”

“So it’s resulting in an increase in drug deaths,” said Ayotte. “It’s very dangerous to people both in Lawrence and New Hampshire, and in the entire country. So, this is a new challenge that we have and need to work together on.”

While promising, it will take more than the cooperation of one Massachusetts city for this drug-fighting coalition to succeed.

It’s time for the governors of both states — Ayotte and Maura Healey — to set aside political differences and prove they’re both committed to working together in this life-saving mission.

Out of that cooperation must come a concrete drug-interdiction plan, with the resources required to achieve its goals.