Where is the help?

Opioids have taken a huge toll on Pennsylvania

The good news, at least according to former Cleveland Clinic CEO Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, is that the opioid epidemic has “peaked.” By that, the legendary cardiac surgeon means that, nationally, reforms in the way doctors prescribe highly addictive narcotics are having the desired effect of reducing the number of people being swept into the epidemic of opioid dependency.

This has led to a drop in the number of habit-forming opioid prescriptions in recent years. In Pennsylvania, the number of opioid prescriptions has dropped 9 percent from 2013 to 2015.

What are left to address are all the social, legal, community and human devastations the crisis has created. None has adequately been faced. In fact, in the same CNBC interview in which Dr. Cosgrove hailed the “peak” of the epidemic, he said the health crisis is far from over. We will be dealing with its effects and aftermath for years to come.

Many of the people who became addicted to prescription pain medications, at the peak of the crisis, graduated to street drugs when those prescription medicines became unavailable or unaffordable. And heroin was the least of these, as synthetic fentanyl and carfentanil, which are exponentially more powerful than heroin, flooded American streets.

In most states, overdose deaths from these synthetic drugs now have eclipsed overdoses attributed to heroin or the prescription drugs that launched a victim’s addiction.

Pennsylvania’s opioid-related overdose death rate, 18.5 per 100,000 people in 2016, remains above the national average of 13.3.

Naloxone, the overdose-reversing drugs that can save lives, is quickly becoming a major expense for communities. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf dedicated $5 million in the state’s 2017-2018 budget for the drug — a drop in the bucket.

Local police, firefighters and other first responders are still burdened with skyrocketing numbers of calls related to the opioid epidemic, and sky-high expenses to boot.

Schools and social service agencies cannot keep pace with demand, to say nothing of detox, rehabilitation and sober-support programs.

Foster-care systems across the country are not prepared for the influx of children who need temporary homes because their parents are incapacitated by addiction.

We must, as a society, rethink pain management and, as many states are now doing, pursue the legal battle against irresponsible opioid marketers.

But those efforts do nothing for those already trapped in addiction — a whole generation of addicts. Those are the ones who survived.

Moreover, the efforts of the federal government, and most state governments, to help economically depressed small towns, like those in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky, with opioid epidemics that have devastated their communities remain woefully inadequate.

The North American Free Trade Agreement and the global economy brought small-town America to its knees. The opioid epidemic, which few small towns had means to fight, kicked these towns that were down in the teeth.

First came deindustrialization and then the opioid crisis, leaving little left standing of Main Street, middle America. It is too much.

This ought to be a major issue in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race: substantial help for small towns in coping with the opioid crisis. Someone needs to give the small towns of the state the time of day, and the people who live there recognition of their suffering and inherent dignity.