Turning back the opioid drug epidemic
The scene in the parking lot of a Goldsboro McDonald’s last Monday told the story of the opioid epidemic that has hit North Carolina and much of the nation: a young couple passed out from an apparent heroin overdose with their 3-year-old son in the car.
A relative said the 27-year-old father in the car had been doing well until he became addicted to heroin about a year ago. His 26-year-old wife apparently was also drawn in. Now the parents are charged with drug crimes, and their child is in the custody of Wayne County Social Services.
The Goldsboro case is now common as the number of people addicted to opiates – either prescription drugs or heroin – rises and more children are being placed in foster care or the care of relatives. Also last week, a photo went viral on the internet of a grandmother and her friend passed out in a car with a grandchild in the backseat.
The cause of the increase is overuse and abuse of addictive prescription pain killers. When their access to the legal drugs is denied, many addicts buy heroin, a drug often laced with other chemicals that can increase the likelihood of overdose. In North Carolina, the number of unintentional poisoning deaths, most from drug overdoses, increased more than 330 percent from 1999 to 2014, rising from 297 to 1,178.
In many cases, addiction begins with a legitimate need to control pain after an injury or an operation.
The national toll
On an average day in the United States, according to federal statistics, 650,000 opioid prescriptions are dispensed; 3,900 people start using opioids for non-medical uses; 580 start using heroin and 78 people die from an opioid-related overdose. In North Carolina, people die from overdoses at a rate nearly 50 percent higher than the mortality rate for car accidents.
Attorney General Roy Cooper told North Carolina Health News, “Prescription drugs are more available now than they were 20 years ago due to increased prescribing.
“Some of these drugs, especially painkillers, are worth a lot of money on the street,” he said. “We see people illegally diverting legally obtained prescription drugs to sell them or share them with friends and family.”
The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 signed into law by President Obama in July will expand access to naloxone, which first-responders use to reverse the effects of an overdose, expand drug education programs and track legal drugs being diverted into illegal sales.
That’s a start, but there’s much more to be done to stem and then reverse the tide of addiction. Reducing street drug sales with focused law enforcement efforts is a natural step, but the nation’s long and largely failed War on Drugs shows crackdowns rarely solve the problem. What is needed most, first, is help for addicts to recover. That means not only more recovery resources, but changes in the criminal justice system so addicts are directed toward assistance instead of prison.
The broader treatment for this problem is to treat the hopelessness that feeds it. Addiction proliferates in areas where incomes are low and prospects are few. Economic development and education assistance focused on rural areas that have lost industry could break the bleakness that makes drugs first an appealing escape and eventually a dangerous trap.
This story was originally published September 18, 2016 at 6:20 AM with the headline "Turning back the opioid drug epidemic."