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Fight of opioid epidemic costing resources elsewhere

LISBON — A major drug epidemic is costing more than its users a significant amount of money, it is draining the budgets of the forces set up to protect them.

During a meeting to discuss the opiate epidemic on Tuesday in Lisbon, Columbiana County Sheriff Ray Stone said the fight to eradicate drugs is taking money away from other areas.

“The economics of the county is burdened 100 percent by drugs … any officeholder in the county is consumed by battling this war on drugs. It consumes the entire budget of the county,” he said.

Stone was one of many to speak during the meeting organized by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and state Rep. Tim Ginter, R-Columbiana, in response to a recent upsurge in drug overdoses not only in the county but the state and even the nation in the last several weeks and months.

In addition to DeWine, other state leaders and county law enforcement and mental health and public service and agency representatives also attended to weigh in on the problem, and what should be done about it.

Stone — and other law enforcement leaders agreed — the departments just don’t have enough money or resources to address the problem successfully.

Stone said that the county jail has a population of about 150, and of that, 80 to 90 percent of the inmates are there because of drugs.

He also said that more than half of the county’s roughly $20 million budget is going toward the drug problem.

“This is where our tax dollars are going,” he said.

Judge Melissa Byers-Emmerling of East Liverpool Municipal Court said the majority of criminal offenses committed are related to drug use.

She and East Liverpool Police Chief John Lane agreed more follow-up is needed for overdose cases, but in order for that to be possible, more officers are needed, and that means more funding to pay them.

Emmerling said the court has 538 bench warrants for probation violators, and 48 percent of those are related to drug or alcohol abuse.

“There’s just not enough people on the streets to serve these bench warrants,” she said.

Lane agreed.

“Until we have resources, you can’t do much about it. It’s not going to go away, it’s only going to get worse unless we deal with it,” he said.

It was in East Liverpool a month ago that a 4-year-old boy was found in the back seat of a vehicle driven by two adults who had overdosed.

The East Liverpool Police Department took a picture of the adults passed out in the car, and the boy still seated in the back seat, and shared it both on social media and in the local media to highlight how bad the problem is getting.

“The photo of East Liverpool went around the world. But I don’t think anyone who deals with this every day is certainly not surprised,” DeWine said. “It is a different epidemic than any epidemic I have ever seen … the face of heroin is literally the face of Ohio.”

U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, said that money alone won’t solve the problem, a change in culture is needed as well.

“The culture needs to change to remove the stigma of drug and alcohol abuse so they can seek help … we can’t throw new money at this with the same barriers and the same cultural attitude,” he said.

Anita Hackstedde, president and CEO of the Salem Regional Medical Center, agreed.

“It is now a medical problem,” she said, and mentioned that hospitals, public health and law enforcement agencies should be trained to deal with it similar to how they are trained for things like the Ebola virus and other health epidemics.

County Health Commissioner Wes Vins said his department uses the Epicenter database that the hospitals use, and within the last two to three weeks the data show a significant increase in overdose cases.

Hackstedde said the hospital has seen an increase in neonatal accident syndrome in the last several months as the result of illicit drug use.

Julie Shea, intervention contract manager for the county’s Help Me Grow program, said that they have seen an increase in referrals as a result of the neonatal accident syndrome as well.

To date, there are 14 families in the county receiving services through the program, and of those, three families have children living with a grandparent because of drug problems.

When it comes to funding, Vins was optimistic that a new tobacco tax could be put toward combating the problem.

The new tax would generate roughly $200 million a year, and he believes some of that money could go back toward resources or other ways to combat the drug problem.

Assistant County Prosecutor John Gamble said it’s going to be more expensive in the long run for everyone involved if money is not put toward addressing the problem.

“It comes down to resources. The Legislature and Congress have to decide if it’s cheaper to spend some money on this problem because it’s going to be more expensive in the long run not to … in the long run it’s cheaper to fund resources,” he said.

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