Task force develops plan of action to decrease opiate addiction in the county

By SARAH EINSELEN

Inquirer Reporter

At its June 9 meet­ing, the Craw­ford County Opi­ates Task Force “added to its to-do list,” accord­ing to co-chairwoman Jody Demo-Hodgins. The task force dis­cussed its options and laid out sev­eral goals and con­crete steps to achiev­ing those goals.

Aware­ness

Mainly, the task force will raise aware­ness about the issue via an all-out media cam­paign. Dave Williamson, direc­tor of the Craw­ford County Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Part­ner­ship, said that based on his media back­ground, all kinds of media should be used.

Plans are to run pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments on the upper chan­nels of Time-Warner cable and on the Time-Warner bul­letin board chan­nel, and to use radio air time and news­pa­per press releases as well. The task force dis­cussed putting up bill­boards too, but the cost of a bill­board seemed expen­sive and that deci­sion was put off for a later meeting.

A recov­er­ing addict at the task force meet­ing sug­gested staffing a table at local fes­ti­vals. After dis­cus­sion of the price of a booth and the man­power nec­es­sary to staff one, many in the group thought it would be more effi­cient to part­ner with a sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tion, such as the county board of health, to staff a booth and dis­trib­ute materials.

Addi­tion­ally, the Craw­ford group planned to part­ner with the state task force and its media initiative.

Edu­ca­tion

Another goal of the task force is to involve the local recov­ery com­mu­nity in the efforts to stop the county’s drug addic­tion prob­lem. Accord­ing to a man active in the Galion-are recov­ery com­mu­nity, local recov­er­ing addicts are more than will­ing to help if given appro­pri­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties. The man wished to remain anony­mous because of his asso­ci­a­tion with recov­er­ing addicts, to pro­tect their pri­vacy and his.

The task force plans to build on some exist­ing efforts to reduce opi­ate addic­tion in the county, as well as to start a cou­ple new efforts.

Besides the aware­ness cam­paign to run in the local media, the task force dis­cussed orga­niz­ing a list of avail­able speak­ers to dis­trib­ute to orga­ni­za­tions who might be inter­ested in learn­ing more about drug addic­tions and how to fight them.

The task force also intends to iden­tify a physi­cian in Craw­ford County will­ing to admin­is­ter medication-assisted treat­ment to drug addicts and to train that physi­cian in the treat­ment. No such treat­ment exists in Craw­ford County, though a facil­ity in Mans­field just re-opened last week.

Law enforce­ment

Local law enforce­ment will be involved with the task force’s ini­tia­tives. The Galion police depart­ment has already held two drug take back days in the past two years, in which res­i­dents may bring in their old pre­scrip­tion drugs and sharps (nee­dles) for proper dis­posal. The most recent one was about a month ago. Another one has not yet been planned for this year.

The task force also plans to apply for help through the Ohio office of the High Inci­dence Drug Traf­fick­ing Area pro­gram, a fed­eral pro­gram which coor­di­nates local, state and fed­eral law enforce­ment to halt drug traf­fick­ing. The pro­gram also pro­vides equip­ment and tech­nol­ogy to the agen­cies involved.

Other plans include re-inviting the county judges to the task force meetings.

Sup­port

Sev­eral sup­port groups already exist in Craw­ford County to help the fam­i­lies of drug addicts, includ­ing Alco­holics Anony­mous, Nar­cotics Anony­mous and Together We Hurt, Together We Heal. The task force dis­cussed launch­ing a com­ple­men­tary group mod­eled after Scioto County’s “SOLACE” group, intended to sup­port fam­i­lies who have lost loved ones to drug-related deaths. “SOLACE” stands for Sur­viv­ing Our Loss And Con­tin­u­ing Every day.

The task force intends to use the state Recov­ery to Work pro­gram to help opi­ate addicts who meet spe­cific cri­te­ria escape their addic­tion, receive voca­tional reha­bil­i­ta­tion and obtain gain­ful employ­ment. The pro­gram is already funded via exist­ing state bud­get money.

The Craw­ford County Con­tact hot­line also serves already as a tele­phone cri­sis inter­ven­tion and refer­ral ser­vice, which a recov­er­ing addict at the meet­ing said was impor­tant. Dis­cus­sion ensued sur­round­ing whether to expand the ser­vice to include tex­ting capa­bil­i­ties and how to go about doing so. Some task force mem­bers thought younger addicts in par­tic­u­lar would be much more com­fort­able ask­ing for help via SMS rather than via a tele­phone call.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Jun 13 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.