DeWine visits Springfield to talk about drug ‘epidemic’

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The Springfield News-Sun has written for the past year about the prescription drug and heroin problem in the region. In October, our Prescription for Pain series led to several bills being introduced in the Ohio House. Count on us to continue our in-depth coverage on this issue.

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Source: Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s Office

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine sounded the alarm about the drug abuse and overdose “epidemic” that is sweeping Clark County and Ohio when he visited Springfield High School on Wednesday.

DeWine hosted his sixth Drug Abuse Community Forum with the goal of spurring discussion among community leaders and a panel of local experts about the rapidly growing problem.

“We have a heroin epidemic, a prescription pill epidemic and an epidemic of abusing many other different drugs,” said DeWine. “When I first started my career, you would find deaths caused by heroin overdose in the cities but not in rural areas and, most of the time, not in the suburbs.

“Now it is cheap, it is plentiful and it is everywhere.”

DeWine said close to 900 deaths in Ohio were caused directly by a heroin overdose last year, “and I believe there were at least an equal number of deaths as an indirect result of heroin addiction.”

“We cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” he said. “(Community leaders, law enforcement and local experts) can do our jobs, but ultimately it will be up to each community. Fighting drugs will come down to grass roots efforts, neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community, city by city and county by county.”

Dr. Kent Youngman, Mental Health and Recovery Board of Clark, Greene and Madison Counties CEO, shared that between 2006-2012 in his three-county area, those treated for opiate addiction problems has risen 55 percent. Spending by his organization on treatment has increased 60 percent.

In the last three months, more than 2,780,000 doses of opiates were prescribed — enough for 20 doses for every man, woman and child in the three-county area, Youngman said. That’s above and beyond the illegal heroin being brought into the area, mostly from Mexico, according to DeWine.

Youngman referred to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services data that showed for every one opiate addict that seeks treatment, there are six others who don’t. Compounding the problem, since 2010 his region has lost 30 percent of its funding, and he projects that it will lose $675,000 more by 2016.

Youngman echoed DeWine that the solution to this problem includes strong community response but also changes in laws, vigorous enforcement of those laws and adequate, long-term treatment.

Springfield Police Chief Stephen Moody reported that his city had its eighth drug overdose death of 2014 on Wednesday. Wendy Doolittle, CEO of McKinley Hall, Clark County’s largest treatment facility, added that there were 39 overdose deaths in 2012, 29 of which were directly related to heroin, and she expects the final number for 2013 will be 36.

“People think it is not affecting all of us,” said Doolittle. “But when you look at the rising prison population, crime, children missing school because they are not being taken care of, you quickly see it does affect all of us.”

Danielle Smoot, director of Cole’s Warriors, which she started after the prescription pill overdose death of her teenage son, cited a Cleveland Clinic statistic that about 50 percent of their drug-addicted clients got started by abusing prescription medicine.

“We have to educate ourselves first, then spread that education to all others around us,” said Smoot.

Added Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly: “We’ve got to try everything, because what we have been doing isn’t working.”