Voices of heroin crisis heard as funding cuts loom
Central Florida’s heroin epidemic continues to escalate wildly, local officials testified Tuesday, and one of the few signs of progress — a jail intervention pilot program — is about to have its funding cut by the Florida Legislature.
Before a capacity crowd of about 150 at the Orange County Commission Chambers, a panel of state government representatives hosted the latest in a series of community workshops on Florida’s opioid crisis, hearing pleas from parents, recovering addicts and treatment providers that more resources are needed to keep the death toll from rising.
“As we speak, [the jail program] is not funded in the
state budget,” said Dick Jacobs, president and CEO of Aspire Health Partners, the region’s largest treatment provider for substance abuse and mental illness. “This is too important an issue to play politics over. There are people dying in our community.”
At Aspire, the number of patients seeking treatment for opioid addiction has climbed from 667 three years ago to nearly 1,400 last year — with a 450 percent increase in those whose drug of choice is heroin.
“What that says to us is that we’re in the midst of an epidemic,” said Shannon Robinson, Aspire’s vice president of medical development.
“What that says is that when we make a referral, the funding has to be available for individuals to seek treatment” — including people who otherwise can’t afford it.
The jail’s pilot program, recommended by the Orange County Heroin Task Force, links inmates who want help to addiction counseling, treatment after jail and therapy with Vivitrol, a brand-name form of naltrexone, which blocks pleasure sensors in the brain that cause intense cravings for heroin.
Of the 36 inmates who have been treated so far, only three have been re-arrested for further crimes — a “significantly lower” recidivism rate than for untreated heroin addicts, according to Cornita Riley, Orange County’s chief of corrections.
“So far, we have seen success,” she said. “The inmates receive the injection before they leave the jail, which closes that window of vulnerability for relapse upon release.”
The county also had equipped more than 1,150 law enforcement officers with naloxone — a drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose when given quickly enough. The move is credited with saving at least 78 lives since July.
Yet the price of the drug is prohibitive, some said.
“The price of naloxone has skyrocketed, just like [allergic-reaction medication] EpiPens,” said Theresa Andrew of College Park, who lost her son, Robby, to an opioid overdose in 2013. “It’s unconscionable. I called around ... and only one pharmacy said, ‘I’d be happy to order it for you.’ Everyone else was, ‘What’s naloxone?’ You can allow it over the counter, but if they don’t have it, everyone dies.”
The panel was convened following complaints that Gov. Rick Scott isn’t doing enough to address the state’s opioid crisis. Scott sent representatives from the Florida Department of Children and Families, the Department of Health and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to host the community workshops around the state, and in West Palm Beach on Monday, the panelists got an earful.
There, more than 250 people crowded a conference room to demand action — with some shouting curse words and others holding photographs of dead loved ones. The panel will make its final stop today in Jacksonville.
“The heroin epidemic we’re dealing with now is particularly challenging,” acknowledged DCF Secretary Mike Carroll. “And I don’t think any family anywhere should have to lose a child to opioid addiction, particularly when it’s preventable.”
But Orlando attorney Kendra Jowers told the panel in Orlando that the governor should do much more, including declaring a state of emergency — a move that would allow more drastic intervention.
“We’ve been talking about this issue for a very long time,” Jowers said, “but so far it doesn’t really seem to me that that has translated to helping anybody. We still have — what? — seven to 10 people dying every day.”