By Kim Smith Dedam
Press-Republican
ELIZABETHTOWN, N.Y. — The drug epidemic in Essex County has a powerful new counterforce.
That coalition isn’t just making sure every ambulance or police car has a Narcan kit to save the lives of those who overdose on opioids. It is helping communities learn the dangers of drug addiction and supporting families who live with it.
Called the Essex County Heroin and Opioid Prevention Coalition, it comes of pooled resources from local hospital and medical personnel to Department of Social Services staff; from addiction and mental-health coordinators to law enforcement officers; from the District Attorney’s Office to the county’s Public Health Department.
Leaders in each department admitted in unison at a meeting Friday that the county can’t “arrest its way” out of the current drug problem.
And at that session, the painful and often long-term battle with addiction was made clear by parents in the gallery.
Now retired and living in Wilmington, Bob Rose shared some of his son’s struggle to get treatment, traveling from Ithaca by bus to get methadone in New York City.
Rose lost his son and his daughter-in-law to overdose several years ago, but talking about their struggle, one they didn’t win, still bring tears.
“Don’t be too proud to say, ‘It’s not my child,’” Rose advised parents. “If you think something’s not right, it’s not.”
For the new effort, top officials in every agency have linked services, and that response is adding new treatment options for addicts and their families, along with new public-health training to prevent opioid abuse.
The Prevention Coalition recently won a $120,000 grant from the New York State Health Fund and began the process of hiring a director.
This organization is separate and apart from the Essex County Drug Task Force, explained District Attorney Kristy Sprague, who co-founded the coalition and introduced the group on Friday.
“Yes,” Sprague said, “we’ve got to stop the drugs from getting into our community. But what do we do when it gets here?”
She said she receives calls of frustration every day from family, friends and neighbors who know which houses or apartments drugs are being bought and sold from in their town.
People ask, she said, “‘How come you can’t just go knock down their door?’”
The answer, she explained, is that it takes time to build a legal case.
And although drug treatment protocol is well-developed in the County Jail and corrections systems, the coalition is training boots on the ground to stop addiction before it starts.
That part is building from Public Health resources, said Essex County Public Health Department Director Linda Beers.
The goal is to raise awareness with local residents about the danger of opioids, including heroin, and prescription drug abuse.
Public Health created a heroin/opioid training module for all school nurses and staff, Beers said.
Aspects of the program also will be used with area schools.
Beers said there are four segments in the community outreach plan: prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery.
In order to foster a culture of prevention, Ticonderoga Police Chief Mark Johns said, their police force thinks of addiction as a disease.
And to cure this disease, the Ticonderoga Town Council has urged area health agencies to add treatment and counseling services, Johns said.
Many area agencies have taken similar steps.
The counseling service at St. Joseph’s Addiction Treatment and Recovery Centers added Saturday hours in Elizabethtown and in Saranac Lake.
They are also working more extensively with families coping under the constant strain of addiction, according to counselor Lisa Sears-Bowlen.
Doug Meyer, director of services for the Essex County Mental Health Association, said they’ve added screening for patients who have high Medicaid use.
“We see over-prescription daily,” he said.
And while suboxone treatment works well for less-hardened users, Meyer said, Essex County needs a methadone program.
The Prevention Coalition is hosting a Narcan training seminar next week.
As the problem with addiction exploded, the waiting period for room in treatment programs grew.
Beers said Public Health remains proactive, sourcing new clinics, ambulatory detoxification centers and new outpatient counseling services.
Health-care and mental-health facilities are working in concert.
“We are regionalizing in the new approach,” Beers said.
The prospect of a waiting period doesn’t have to delay the first step to get help, she observed.
The issue of payment for services is constrained, often by health-insurance providers who pay for five days of inpatient treatment, plus maybe six more, Sears-Bowlen said.
Often, 11 days isn’t enough to help people end opioid addiction, she said.
Town of Lewis Supervisor Jim Monty said a big part of the problem is that insurance companies do not deem inpatient treatment for heroin or opioid addiction a “medical necessity.”
Many heads in the room nodded, familiar with the Catch-22: An over-prescription of covered drug use ends with underpayment for treatment.
Both Sen. Betty Little (R-Queensbury) and Assemblyman Dan Stec (R-Queensbury) attended Friday’s meeting, and they are both working on companion legislation to help fund local prevention efforts.
Stec said New York has put prevention and treatment monies in the state budget to help communities form a response.
And Little recognized the high-level of cooperation here.
“You are the epitome of a coalition; this is certainly great leadership on the part of Essex County,” Sen. Little said.
The goal is to derail a cycle of addiction.
“Once (a young person) is in it, trying to get them off heroin is very, very difficult,” Sprague said.
“‘Put them in jail, put them in jail,’” is not always an option. It’s a very violent cycle that we need to put an end to.”
Copyright 2016 the Press-Republican