Recent arrests by police in Bangor and statewide should remove any doubts that Maine is seeing an increase in the use of heroin and the abuse of highly addictive prescription drugs. The recent compromise between the state and the city of Bangor to discuss treatment options, however, falls short of what’s needed.

Mental Health Commissioner Lynn Duby and City Council Chairman Michael Aube last week agreed to shelve a plan for an in-depth look at methadone and other types of treatment in favor of a public forum on the issue. A forum is a fine way to get a sense of what the public thinks about a methadone clinic and may even answer some basic questions about the drug. But it doesn’t allow the city to participate in making formal recommendations about how to proceed.

Bangor is like a lot of small communities — differences here often can be solved over a cup of coffee, among people who have known each other for years. This time, a less personal, more divisive approach has been taken, splitting the city and ceding to the state questions better answered, or at least influenced, locally. But Bangor still can take positive action, educating itself both about the problem of opiate addiction and the possible means to reduce or eliminate it.

The public forum is scheduled for July. Before that happens, the City Council should agree with the Mental Health Department to select five people each and five more in common to try again to create a 15-member task force that, while it might not hold the most convivial of meetings, could nevertheless draw up a range of methods for stopping this form of drug abuse and get help for those addicted. The current draft task force list already contains names of people both sides could agree to; surely, each can list five more who are open-minded enough to listen to both sides and come to some agreement.

And even before that, local city officials, people associated with Eastern Maine Healthcare and Acadia Hospital and various other residents who have shown intense interest in this issue might again sit down together informally, if for no other reason than to ensure they understand what points they already agree on and where they disagree. Such a discussion is certain to be wide-ranging and may turn up issues about process that the state could then address at the public forum.

The presence of heroin and the seemingly pervasive abuse of legal drugs in the region have put everyone on edge. But Bangor cannot let the issue harm the community as the drugs themselves harm the abuser. The question must always come back to how can residents fight this problem — together.