Scott Maxwell: Orphans are innocent faces of opioid crisis.
In Sunday’s newspaper, reporters Beth Kassab and Stephanie Allen put a face on the deadly opioid scourge ravaging this state and nation.
Actually, three young, innocent faces — those of 1-year-old Nicholas, 2-year-old Aiden and 5-year-old Joey.
The three boys lost both their parents in December when their mother and father died of overdoses on the shoulder of Interstate 4.
When a trooper pulled up to mile marker 122 near DeLand, he found Mom’s body slumped against the car. Dad was lying dead in the grass a few feet away.
The three little boys were still buckled in the back seat. One screamed “Daddy!” over and over.
But Daddy was gone. So was Mommy. The drugs had taken them.
The children are orphans of an epidemic.
Nationwide, opioids were blamed for the deaths of 33,000 in 2015 — more people than the entire population of Winter Park.
In Orange County alone, someone dies every other day from opioid use.
Overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50 — killing more people than even the deadliest years of handguns, car crashes or AIDS, according to The New York Times. Florida is reeling. I may not have a personal connection to the issue, but I respect numbers. And the numbers say we have a deadly problem.
For those of us who have never seen addiction up close, it’s sometimes hard to accept addiction as a “disease.” But Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood — a tough-as-nails, get-the-scumbags guy whose office investigated the parents’ deaths — says these two weren’t criminals in his mind.
“They were people who had a disease,” he said, “and the disease killed them.”
Most experts say the same thing.
To understand the powerful grip opioids can have, think of a drug like morphine, which plugs directly into the central nervous system. Morphine is powerful. And addictive. It can temporarily ease the pains of the body or the burdens of the world.
Well, fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more powerful. Think about the grip something like that can have.
Some other opioids, cooked up in Chinese labs, are up to 10,000 times more powerful. They were meant for sedating elephants, not for human ingestion.
The problem with such drugs isn’t just addiction. A single dose — a tiny speck — can kill or send the body into shock, whether it’s a curious teen, an unknowing adult or even a first responder who comes in contact with the substance.
Your community, your state and your country are under siege.
Elected officials from both
Continued from Page B1 parties know this. In May, Gov. Rick Scott declared the opioid epidemic a state of emergency. And we have done some good things — including providing naloxone, a drug that can save lives, to first responders.
Legislators have also toughened penalties on dealers — and rightfully so. The sleaze who peddle and profit from deadly drugs should be treated like the accessories to addiction and murder they are.
But we have to do more than just rely on law enforcement. Take it from the people who work there.
“It’s just such a big problem,” said Orange County sheriff ’s Capt. Carlos Espinosa, who works on the front lines. “It’s bigger than just us.”
He said his office has responded to overdoses with life-saving naloxone one day only to see them OD a few days later and die.
You can’t merely arrest your way out of that problem. More treatment options are needed. Orange County’s Heroin Task Force said as much last year. Yet much of the state’s efforts has been on arrests on the front end and lastditch efforts to save lives at the back end. We have to do more to treat the addiction and use in the middle.
Even if a user wants help, it’s sometimes hard to get.
“If they don’t have good insurance, they’re not getting help,” Espinosa said. “Where are we going to put these people?”
Law enforcement in some cities has begun directing anyone who admits a problem to treatment. The problem here is that we don’t yet have enough resources.
I’ve come to realize some people will never consider any of this their problem. They view deaths as the result of weakness and personal irresponsibility and feel no obligation to help find or fund solutions.
Still, those people are already paying. We all are. For first-responders, incarceration, foster care and more.
To put the finances in perspective, Kassab cited a book by recently deceased New York Times columnist David Carr, a former addict himself, who noted that, once his state paid to get him clean, taxpayers were not only saved the expense of prison for him and foster care for his children, but that: “As a citizen with the wheels glued back on, I have probably kicked back more than $300,000 in federal and state taxes.”
All for spending a fraction of that on what Carr described as “a loser like me.”
Looking at it that way, this issue just becomes a matter of basic math. It’s cheaper to save lives … and to save other innocent children from the tragedy of losing their parents.