NO BOUNDARIES
TOWN HALL MEETING FOCUSES ON OPIOID EPIDEMIC IN UPSCALE SUBURB
RADNOR » Sometimes it starts with pills. Sometimes it starts with marijuana. But the scourge of opioid addiction strikes everywhere, including upscale suburbs like those on the Main Line.
That was the sobering message from the Delaware County Heroin Task Force presentation on opioid use at the Radnor Township Building Tuesday.
Steve Graham Jr., a resident who is a recovering addict, shared his experiences. Although he had a privileged upbringing, and attended Malvern Prep and Cornell University, he became hooked on pills. It started when Graham was in college and had “a bunch of injuries ...
“My drug of choice was downers, opiates and marijuana,” Graham said. “Cornell was a high-stress environment.” He took drugs on weekends but eventually found out “the more you take it, the more you need it.
“I wanted to get clean,” he said. “It wasn’t easy … That addiction was so strong.”
As for parents who deal with addicted children, he said, “It’s not your child anymore. I did things I never would do. It takes over your brain. You do anything to get high.” At the end of his addiction, Graham had a $500-a-day pill habit and “the pain to get off (drugs) was incredible,” he said.
With the help of his “very supportive family,” Graham has been off drugs for six years. When his wife left, “to me that was rock bottom,” Graham said. He knew he had to do something, he said, and went to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. He went to three meetings a day and also sought doctors for treatment. He took Suboxone, a medicine used to treat addiction.
“It saved my life,” he said. “It’s one tool in your tool belt.”
Graham also said that he does not think that the standard 30-day drug treatment programs are long enough and that 90 days should be the minimum.
In the meantime, he has lost friends to addiction.
“I’m really grateful to be here and be clean. I try to help as many kids as possible,” he said.
Delaware County Councilman David White, who co-chairs the Delaware County Heroin Task Force with District Attorney Jack Whalen, said the county recently filed a lawsuit against the major pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue Pharma, Teva, Johnson & Johnson and others that market opioid drugs.
White and Whalen, both Republicans, are on the November ballot; White is running for re-election and Whalen for a county judgeship.
“These pharmaceutical companies colluded,” White claimed. “They literally told the doctors these drugs were not addictive.”
Some 80 percent of opioids manufactured in the world are sold in the United States, he said. So far this year, there have been 185 drug-related deaths and 162 were opioid related.
“We can see exactly what their plan was,” said White, about the pharmaceutical companies. “Their plan was to sell pills. We’re going after these pharmaceuticals. They need to be held accountable.”
The county hopes to use money gained from the lawsuit to help fund treatment programs, he said.
“They’re the ways we’re trying to think outside the box,” White said. “Jack Whelan and I started the Heroin Task Force … This is an epidemic that affects anyone.” Whether people are rich or poor, men or women, “it makes no difference,” he said. The overdose victims range from 18 to 65, he said.
He recommended that people remove unneeded pills from their medicine cabinets and bring them to the township building in Radnor where there is a box for safe disposal in the basement.
Radnor Police Sgt. Joe Pinto agreed, saying “when it comes to heroin there is no stereotype” and people are dying in the smallest houses to “million dollar homes.”
“The only way we’re going to beat this epidemic is we’re all going to have to work together.” — Delaware County Councilman David White, who co-chairs the Delaware County Heroin Task Force with District Attorney Jack Whalen
Before Superintendent William Colarulo joined the department, drug cases were handled “on the street level.” People caught with drugs would go to jail. But now the township partners with the county drug task force to go after dealers that supply narcotics, Pinto said.
“Our goal is to stop the drugs at the source,” Pinto said. “They’re just preying on these people who are victims.” Drug use leads to “ancillary crimes” like thefts from cars, retail theft or burglaries, he said. Addicts steal to “get objects they can turn into money to purchase drugs.”
In Radnor, statistics show heroin incidents included six in 2013, three in 2014, seven in 2015 and 27 in 2016. As of Aug. 17, there have been 11 this year. Five people died from opioids in 2016 and one so far this year, Pinto said. Police used Narcan (which can revive a person who has overdosed on an opioid) five times in 2016 and once in 2017. Pinto has seen people who are revived by Narcan curse at the officer who saved them for interfering with their high.
“It’s important for a community like Radnor to get out in front of it,” said Pinto.
Radnor Commissioner Luke Clark said there is a lot of intergovernmental cooperation throughout the county. Pinto said county detectives help the township with undercover operations.
As the father of three young children, Clark asked what he can do to keep them safe from drugs, in addition to getting rid of unused painkillers. When Clark was in high school at The Haverford School, two of his friends began to use drugs.
“One ended up in jail on continual probation violations and could not get off of it,” he said. “Another went to jail for DUIs and could not get off heroin.
“My friends were not supervised,” he said. “It led to some issues down the road.”
Radnor police are “the top line of defense. They are all over this,” said Clark. People need to know how a small amount of carfentanyl will kill you as will fentanyl that drug dealers mix with heroin, he said.
“This is not joke,” Clark said. As a lawyer who handles family law cases he sees parents with drug problems and the custody master held a bar association forum on that problem.
“In my capacity as a commissioner, we are aware of the problem,” said Clark. “We are looking at what we can do about this. It’s not something we can turn a blind eye to.”
Whelan said fentanyl “is everywhere” but there have been no carfentanyl cases in Delaware County so far, although there was one in Montgomery County.
“Carfentanyl is used to tranquilize elephants,” Whelan said. “If someone is using carfentanyl, they’re not going to make it.”
The stronger the heroin is, the more Narcan is needed to revive them, he said.
In one case it took six doses of Narcan to revive a person.
“It’s extremely dangerous,” Whelan said. People taking heroin “don’t know what’s in it,” he said. It can be cut with fentanyl or other substances. In the 1970s heroin was only 10 percent pure, he said. Now the heroin in the Philadelphia region is 90 percent pure. There are also risks of exposure to fentanyl and carfentanyl for first responders.
Pinto said they were forced to “change our entire way we handle narcotics.” The police had used field kits to test for drugs. Now they “double bag them and put warning signs on them” and send the suspected drugs to a lab. They also keep a Narcan dispenser in the evidence room and, for safety, officers do not handle drug evidence alone.
Delaware County recently purchased a new device that can be used to detect either drugs or explosives that are still inside containers, said Whalen. The detector, which cost around $50,000, will help with safety, he said.
“We’re about to make it available to all our police departments and the bomb squad,” he said. Also, the county will supply masks and gloves for first responders that need them.
White said Delaware County also offers a new second chance court along with a drug court to help drug offenders get treatment.
“It’s a long-term recovery court,” said White. “To complete your sentencing you need to recover.” The drug court recovery rate is about 84 percent and Whalen praised the drug court judges.
“The only way we’re going to beat this epidemic is we’re all going to have to work together,” said White.
“Each judge is very concerned and they want to see success.”
Clark noted that during the academic year, one third of Radnor’s population is comprised of college students.