'WE'RE LOSING OUR CHILDREN: LEADERS TACKLE OPIOID EPIDEMIC BY JON HAWLEY • STAFF WRITER • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
Prescription drug abuse and heroin continue to kill people in northeastern North Carolina, the featured speaker told government and law enforcement officials at a three-county forum in Elizabeth City on Thursday. “We're losing our children, we're losing our family members to addiction,” said Donnie Varnell, a former State Bureau of Investigation agent who now works as an investigator for the Dare County Sheriff’s Office. Pasquotank County and Albemarle Regional Health Services organized the forum, held at the K.E. White Center. The event drew not only Pasquotank and ARHS officials, but officials from Camden and Perquimans counties, as well as Elizabeth City and the towns of Winfall and Hertford. The forum was partly the result of a call by the N.C. Association of County Commissioners for local leaders across the state to get more involved in confronting opioid abuse — a situation officials both statewide and nationally are calling an “epidemic.” “On a national level, more people overdose and die from opioids and other prescription narcotics than die in traffic accidents,” Varnell said. In North Carolina, he reported, prescription opioids contributed to more than 700 deaths of state residents in 2015, more than double the number from cocaine abuse. Compounding the problem, he said, drug dealers are increasingly combining heroin with fentanyl. The latter drug is vastly stronger than morphine and even trace amounts can kill someone, he said. Efforts to stem the prescribing and illicit sale of these drugs have also had an unfortunate side effect: driving up the use of heroin as a cheaper, more easily accessible substitute. Heroin deaths have risen from almost none in North Carolina in 1999 to 363 in 2015. Opioid abuse also appears to still be on the rise, based on state data shared by Walter Meads, assistant director of Pasquotank-Camden Emergency Medical Services. Emergency room visits for opioid overdoses have totaled about 3,100 statewide this year — well on track to surpass the 4,100 in 2016. Locally, Meads reported that opioid abuse has led to a number of deaths,
primarily in Pasquotank County. In 2016, seven Pasquotank residents died from opioid abuse. Thus far this year, four Pasquotank residents have died from opioid abuse. The few fatalities are thanks in large part to naloxone, an anti-opioid medication commonly administered now by both paramedics and law enforcement officers. Meads reported that, across the three counties, EMS crews have administered the drug 76 times so far this year compared to 110 times last year. Meads said that opioid abusers are predominantly white, male, and younger than 35. Law enforcement and ARHS officials reported they are making efforts to stem the tide, however. The Albemarle Overdose Prevention Coalition, a successor to the group that implemented a Project Lazarus drug prevention grant, has hosted prescription medication take-back events and organized educational events in local schools for both kids and parents, ARHS health coordinator Ashley Stoop and others have said. Luke Marcum, an officer with the Elizabeth City Police Department, said that the ECPD, along with other law enforcement agencies and District Attorney Andrew Womble's office, are working to start “assisted diversion” programs that would offer low-level drug offenders treatment without fear of criminal charges. The mindset that every drug abuser should face jail time has burdened law enforcement and the courts, but not stopped drug use, he said. “We are not going to arrest our way out of this problem,” Marcum said.
Marcum added the ECPD hoped to start its program next year. He also stressed that the program must be able to offer addicts immediate, 24/7 help. The program will “lose” people if they have to make appointments or come back later, he said. Following some round-table
discussions, local officials discussed
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